Three weeks since the break - Recovery from surgery wasn't as bad as expected. Mostly I struggled with the fact that my body cannot tolerate any kind of narcotic. My doctor prescribed dilaudid and that worked well for about a week and a half until I got insanely sick from it. I've been off pain meds for awhile now and I've learned to cope with the pain in other ways (lots of books, cat cuddling, library work, and Netflix).
For the past three weeks I have been in a soft cast. This is really just a splint with some bandages wrapped around it so it's pretty easy to bump my leg on something and be in a lot of pain. Today at my first post-op appointment, they took the soft cast off, took the stitches out, took some x-rays, and then put me in a proper hard cast. IT FEELS SO MUCH BETTER!!!!!!! I should also say that, when I was younger, I always kind of envied the kids at school who would occasionally show up with a cast on. I loved how friends could sign the cast and every time they looked at their injured limb, they are reminded of all the people who wished them well. I was oddly excited when the nurse let me pick out the color (purple please!) and started wrapping me up.
As far as the healing goes, the x-rays show good progress on the bone healing and the incisions have closed up well without a trace of infection. The one not so awesome thing is that my foot is swollen because I have not been diligent about elevating my leg above my heart. In my defense, it's really hard to do that when you still have to go to work and live a life. I can't just lay around all day with my leg up. I have important stuff to do ;)
I should be in a walking boot in about two weeks and then in a month I'm supposed to go back to the doc again but I cant remember why (I was too enamored with my new pretty purple cast-foot to listen!). I'm pretty sure it will be a final check up before he pawns me off to the physical therapist.
I think about skating every day. Sometimes it's hard and I need to force myself to stop thinking about it because it's kind of depressing knowing that I can't skate right now. In other ways, it's therapeutic. I'm trying to keep the patterns in my head and remind my muscles how it feels to land a certain jump or ride an edge. I'm hoping that I can get back on the ice by January. I know I won't be able to do anything fancy and I'll spend a lot of time just re-learning the basics but I'll be on the ice and that's all that really matters.
So yeah, I'm still hanging in there :)
Monday, July 24, 2017
Thursday, July 13, 2017
Them's the Breaks!
Where have I been? I've been broken, actually. Like REALLY broken!
I went to the Stable on Sunday July 2nd for my weekend practice and all was going well. I ran through my entire MIF and Freestyle test elements several times and everything felt solid. No issues. After an hour of running through all of that, I started working on spins and jumps. I finally got more than one revolution on my camel and that was encouraging. I did some nice backspins in the flamingo position that felt spintastic. And then I moved on to jumps. I did several salchows that felt slowed down like I wanted and I had just started working on loops. I did a couple that felt really nice, like I had the free leg crossed in front and everything! I was lining up for another loop from backward crossovers and before I even left the ice for the jump, I heard a pop and then intense pain that had me writhing on the ice before I could even comprehend what happened!
I didn't scream out in pain or cry (yet), I just kind of laid there, stunned. People continued to skate around me like it's just completely normal for someone to be laying on the ice. Finally, a kid skated up to me and asked me if I was alright. I said "no" and asked if he could please get someone to help me. He left and again, I just laid there on the ice for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, a dad who was there with his son came up to me and asked if he could help me get off the ice. He tried to pick me up but it just wasn't working so he got a chair and brought it to me and, once he got me seated, he slid me to the closest entrance and got me off the ice. Mind you, during this whole time, not a single staff member came out to assist. I had to again ask someone to get a staff member to help me. In the meantime, I called Dustin and told him to come quick because I thought I broke my ankle.
At this point, the pain kicked in and I think I was starting to go into shock because I was getting insanely cold. Finally, staff came with a clipboard to ask me questions and fill out an incident report. Someone on the staff advised me not to take my boot off (Not like I could anyway. The mere weight of the boot alone was killing me). Once Dustin got there and we determined that there was no way to get me into the car to go the ER, I agreed to have EMS come and take me via ambulance. How embarrassing.
Thankfully, they gave me some super pain meds for the ride because I was losing it with the amount of pain. X-rays confirmed the breaking news (see what I did there?). I broke my ankle which pushed everything outward to break by fibula. So yeah, I didn't just break my ankle, I broke my leg as well and it would have been much worse if my skate boot hadn't kept everything contained.
I had surgery on the 7th with an orthopedist that just does ankles and I am now the proud owner of a newly rebuilt ankle and leg. The good news is that I will be able to skate again in the future (including jumps). The bad news is that it will take quite a while to heal from this. The doctor estimated that I should be able to comfortably return to the ice about a year from now (maybe a bit sooner if I am diligent with my PT).
I ended up emailing Christopher when I was in the ER and told him what happened and that I may possibly be done with skating entirely (I was on a lot of drugs and was feeling very doom and gloom). He was so kind and offered to stop by my apartment to bring some food that his wife had made for us just to help out a little. He came over to the apartment after my surgery and he was able to talk to me about some options for when I return (because I have now decided that I'm not going to let this break me (eh?)). He talked about the possibility of just focusing on MIF or switching gears entirely and working on testing through the Ice Dance levels, which I can do solo if I want.
I have a lot of support and some really good people in my life who are rooting for me. Skating is also my passion and I can't let this one event determine my future. I will rise above! So, this journal may be silent for a while although I may periodically post some progress reports. In the meantime, I will keep running my MIF in my mind and watch videos so that I don't forget anything. I also think it's helpful to watch some skating in person. I went to a freestyle session the day before my surgery just to watch and that reminded me how much I love the ice and how badly I want to return to it. I WILL BE BACK! Below are the before and after x-rays of my left ankle/leg. Enjoy!
Edit - So I know in the second x-ray it looks as though the one screw in the middle is floating. It's not. The doc screwed that one in from the back so that he could connect the two broken ends together. In other words, it's supposed to look like that ;)
I went to the Stable on Sunday July 2nd for my weekend practice and all was going well. I ran through my entire MIF and Freestyle test elements several times and everything felt solid. No issues. After an hour of running through all of that, I started working on spins and jumps. I finally got more than one revolution on my camel and that was encouraging. I did some nice backspins in the flamingo position that felt spintastic. And then I moved on to jumps. I did several salchows that felt slowed down like I wanted and I had just started working on loops. I did a couple that felt really nice, like I had the free leg crossed in front and everything! I was lining up for another loop from backward crossovers and before I even left the ice for the jump, I heard a pop and then intense pain that had me writhing on the ice before I could even comprehend what happened!
I didn't scream out in pain or cry (yet), I just kind of laid there, stunned. People continued to skate around me like it's just completely normal for someone to be laying on the ice. Finally, a kid skated up to me and asked me if I was alright. I said "no" and asked if he could please get someone to help me. He left and again, I just laid there on the ice for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, a dad who was there with his son came up to me and asked if he could help me get off the ice. He tried to pick me up but it just wasn't working so he got a chair and brought it to me and, once he got me seated, he slid me to the closest entrance and got me off the ice. Mind you, during this whole time, not a single staff member came out to assist. I had to again ask someone to get a staff member to help me. In the meantime, I called Dustin and told him to come quick because I thought I broke my ankle.
At this point, the pain kicked in and I think I was starting to go into shock because I was getting insanely cold. Finally, staff came with a clipboard to ask me questions and fill out an incident report. Someone on the staff advised me not to take my boot off (Not like I could anyway. The mere weight of the boot alone was killing me). Once Dustin got there and we determined that there was no way to get me into the car to go the ER, I agreed to have EMS come and take me via ambulance. How embarrassing.
Thankfully, they gave me some super pain meds for the ride because I was losing it with the amount of pain. X-rays confirmed the breaking news (see what I did there?). I broke my ankle which pushed everything outward to break by fibula. So yeah, I didn't just break my ankle, I broke my leg as well and it would have been much worse if my skate boot hadn't kept everything contained.
I had surgery on the 7th with an orthopedist that just does ankles and I am now the proud owner of a newly rebuilt ankle and leg. The good news is that I will be able to skate again in the future (including jumps). The bad news is that it will take quite a while to heal from this. The doctor estimated that I should be able to comfortably return to the ice about a year from now (maybe a bit sooner if I am diligent with my PT).
I ended up emailing Christopher when I was in the ER and told him what happened and that I may possibly be done with skating entirely (I was on a lot of drugs and was feeling very doom and gloom). He was so kind and offered to stop by my apartment to bring some food that his wife had made for us just to help out a little. He came over to the apartment after my surgery and he was able to talk to me about some options for when I return (because I have now decided that I'm not going to let this break me (eh?)). He talked about the possibility of just focusing on MIF or switching gears entirely and working on testing through the Ice Dance levels, which I can do solo if I want.
I have a lot of support and some really good people in my life who are rooting for me. Skating is also my passion and I can't let this one event determine my future. I will rise above! So, this journal may be silent for a while although I may periodically post some progress reports. In the meantime, I will keep running my MIF in my mind and watch videos so that I don't forget anything. I also think it's helpful to watch some skating in person. I went to a freestyle session the day before my surgery just to watch and that reminded me how much I love the ice and how badly I want to return to it. I WILL BE BACK! Below are the before and after x-rays of my left ankle/leg. Enjoy!
Edit - So I know in the second x-ray it looks as though the one screw in the middle is floating. It's not. The doc screwed that one in from the back so that he could connect the two broken ends together. In other words, it's supposed to look like that ;)
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