Gimp Foot

In 2004 I was returning home from a little bit of skinny dipping up at Salisbury Lake way out past Mission when my car was hit by an approaching car who had crossed the center line.  The other car crushed in the driver's side of my car.  My driver's side wheel was bent into the wheel well, which caved in, smashing into my ankle and busting it into many little bits.  My car spun around 2 and a half times and came to rest pointing back the way I had come.  While waiting for the ambulance to arrive some yahoo drove by and shouted out the window, "Sucks to be you!"  I was wisked off to the hospital where I waited 2.5 days for surgery to bolt, plate and screw my ankle back together.

I woke up with my leg wrapped in this nice clean white bandage.  Other than the pain of recovery all seemed peachy!

My surgeon, Dr. Tracy Hicks told me to invert my crutch and hook it under my toes and pull back.  This would increase the range of mobility I would have after healing.  Some people seem to have a problem with Dr. Hicks.  I don't.  He fixed my ankle, wrote a very good report for my lawsuit against the other driver and was always positive and joking when I had to attend the casting clink for check ups.  My theory as to why people don't like him is that he doesn't suffer whiners and many people who are injured are huge crybabies.  People also expect to come out the other side of major body trauma with no ill effects.  This simply does not happen.  People need to get over it and stop blaming doctors who do good work.

 

Inevitably I had to take the dressing off.  What lay underneath was truly disgusting.  The tissue was all kinds of bruised colours from black to yellow.  They'd stapled my incisions closed and the stretching had pulled some of the staples out.  I ended up with a minor skin infection that cleared up be left some extra scarring.  BLECK!

It took 8 months to heel up fully from the injury and even then I was shakey on my feet.  It took some months more to regain my strength and lose the weight I'd put on while laid up.