The road to recovery has been long and unfortunately the end is not in sight yet!
If you read my fathers day race post you can get the whole story as to how I did this. Lets turn the Calendar back 11 weeks to Fathers Day, June 15, 2008. Moto #2. I swapped out on a step up jump at Estreet MX in Marysville. I crashed hard enough to break my left tibia again. Not Good! Sow now I'm in an ambulance and headed to Rideout Hospital in Marysville. They gave me a nice dose of Morphine to temporarily rid me of the pain. Once settled in at the hospital, it was time for x-rays. That was a nightmare. I actually had to get x-rays twice because the x-ray tech screwed up the first time. Damn, that was painful. OK. so now thats squared away. The dreaded doctors visit. More bad news. Turns out I broke the end of my tibia in 4 places just under my knee cap. The doc explains that on one side I broke a chunk of the bone completely off, and the other end I fractured it in 3 places. So surgery is a definite. Now here's where it get interesting! Last October 2007 I suffered a compound fracture to my tibia and broke my fibula in 2 places. Well that required a titanium rod and 2 screws that ran the full length of my Tibia from ankle to knee. The doc tells me in order to fix this break they will need to put a new plate and several screws in to put everything back together. However that's not so easy because they first need to remove the rod and screws to fit a plate over the new broken section of bone. The next step is deciding weather to do the surgery there or see my own doctor. Well considering I live almost 2 hours away, I didn't want my wife doing all that driving back and forth. So I decided to drive home that night and start the process with my doctor. One last shot of morphine and off my wife and I go..
The next morning we go to my doctor. He sets up an appointment with a Kaiser ortho surgeon. Unfortunately I had to wait till Thursday for that. Talk about a painful 4 days!!! Gotta love that Kaiser urgent care???? So here I am sitting in the examination room for nearly an hour, my leg is killing me, and still no doc. WTF. So I go ask the nurse if this guy has forgotten about me?? Minutes later the doc comes in. Tells me he is sorry, but he had to go get a second surgeon to review my file and x-rays. He again explains what had been previously told to me last Sunday by the first doc regarding what procedure going to be done. He tells me there will be another surgeon assisting with my surgery because of the complex amount of work that needed to be done. OK great, so the surgery is set for Saturday. I'll be staying a few days after for observation, then released Monday evening. I cant wait, my leg is killing me. I just want to get this over with. But before I could go, they took me into the casting room where they had to re-set my leg and put it in a brace. Now that was painfully fun!
Saturday up by 5am. Surgery is at 8am. By noon I'm coming out of my trance. Holy Sh_t... My leg is killing me. I was begging for pain killers, and I got them. That was some gnarly stuff. I don't remember much of my hospital stay. I know I was uncomfortable, in a lot of pain and a pain in the ass. I scared my wife a few times and certainly pissed off the nurses! The painkillers they gave, had me hallucinating. At one point I told my wife to go check in at the gate and find out what time my moto was, another I told her to tell my son Gino to go tell our dog to quit barking. The best one was about Midnight the first night. I awoke to a voice telling me GET UP, THE RED LIGHT IS OFF,....GET UP, THE RED LIGHT IS OFF????...I dont know?? so I get up and start taking all my clothes of and begin to remove my IV when the nurses rush in and have to put me back to bed... By Monday the nursing staff was more than ready to get me out of there. My biggest complaint of the weekend was that fact that they would not change bandages and dressings wrapped around my leg. By Sunday night the dressing had started to irritate my leg severely. The bandages were very tight, and it was like sandpaper against raw skin...... I kept begging them, to change the dressing out but they refused saying the doc said no??? BS as I later found out! I sure was glad to get out of there Monday night.
The first week at home was brutal. A lot of pain no matter what position my leg was in. Say hello to Percocet, and Norco. Standing up was even worse. Forget about sleep. That was a rarity for weeks. Time was mostly spent in my recliner nodding off here and there. The doctor eventually prescribed me sleeping pills after 2 weeks of sleepless nights. They did help me sleep in longer intervals but no more than a few hours at a time. Too much pain in my leg. Problem was I could not find a comfortable position to lay in.... I know sissy la la. But after about 6 weeks I was able to settle in to more sleep and a better comfort level. Things have gotten better, but not nearly as fast as expected.
Back to the first week. By Wednesday after being released I could no longer bear the irritation that the bandages and dressing had caused so I removed them and was shocked at what I found. My leg was blistered up pretty good. The gauze pads were loaded with dry blood and were rock hard, which was why my leg was so irritated and blistered. I still don't understand why the hell those nurses would not re-wrap my leg. Oh well. I finally had some relief. I was also amazed too see the 49 total staples I had scattered all over my leg. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I also had to have my wife give me blood thinner shots in the stomach for 2 weeks. Damn, I hate needles. I guess that was one way for her to get back at me for all the crap I had been putting her through!
After 2 weeks at home and unable to bend my leg at the knee I had my first doctor appointment. Not much change there. Just got my staples removed and was told pretty much the same thing. keep it elevated, don't try to walk on it or apply any pressure. Oh and here's is a prescription for some sleeping pills. The next appointment was 4 weeks away....
So now the tv is getting old, xbox 360 is about burned out. But hey, I should be able to start walking here pretty soon? Right! Still pretty painful, just getting up to go to the boys room or shower was a painful workout. I kept telling the nay sayers not to worry, I'll be walking without these crutches very soon.
6 weeks have come and gone. I cant bend my leg at the knee yet. Still too much pain??? What the hell is the problem? Visit number 2 with the doctor was not what I had hoped or expected. I was told it would be another 4 weeks at least before I could put any weight on my knee and I was not allowed to do any therapy yet because my bones have not healed enough. If I tried to do anything I could risk bending or breaking the screws or worse breaking the bone again! I was not happy with that. So the Doctor pulls up my x-rays and shows me this area of bone fragments and says I shattered this entire area of bone. He points out 3 or 4 longs screws that were put in place to anchor all the fragments of bone. Above that there is a bunch of cartilage that was crushed. On the other side he shows me the plate with 4 screws in it that are holding the piece of bone that had broke away. He then asked if I now understand how serious and bad the damage is. I was floored. I had no idea it was so bad. I thought it was a couple of fractures and a piece of bone that broke off. Well the damage is done. Just got to get this thing healed up and move on..
The next 4 weeks was pretty much the same as prescribed earlier...Sit on my rear and wait. Bones are strong enough for therapy, and I cant put any pressure on my leg yet. Now I'm frustrated. Pissed! Ive had just about enough of these crutches and I still cant bend my leg at the knee! I'm bored out of my mind. Just doing my best to maintain composure.
Finally, the third appointment has arrived. Bound to get some good news now? Nope, not completely. Instead I got more bad news. Fortunately the bones are healing pretty well. But there is a problem with the fact that I cant bend my leg at the knee. Even worse the x-rays don't tell the doctor the whole story. They would like to do a CT scan, but the metal in my leg will interfere. So the Doctor decides to set me up with a special brace that will assist in getting my leg to start bending. Second he sets me up with some physical therapy. Then he tells me I STILL am unable to walk with out crutches or apply any weight for at least another 4 weeks. You have got to be kidding. He tells me that I lost some range of motion in last month. I asked if there was something I did wrong or?? Nope we had to be cautious he said. We don't want to risk re-breaking anything! Plus there is a lot of scar tissue that needs to be broken up. OK.... So now I'm told I'll be getting this fancy brace and I need to get busy with flexation therapy....
Wait it gets better. A few hours later I get a call from the Doctor. Now he is telling me how concerned he and another surgeon are about my leg not bending at the knee. They are going to bring me back in, in 2 weeks to put me to sleep, cut me open and force my leg to bend. This is really starting to piss me off! He's now worried that if we dont start doing something very soon, I could lose mobility of my leg at the knee?????!!!!!!. So now Ive got to get cut open again to try and break up all the scar tissue in my leg.
Well now yesterday I was fitted with this brace. I will get it next week. This thing is designed to force my leg to bend in 5 degree increments. Right now I have about 40 degrees at the knee. I'm told this process will last another 4 months, and with the help of this brace I should be able to get 150 Degrees of movement. It takes so long because I have to re program the muscle and tendon memory at the knee to start bending again. Due to the atrophy I'll also need to strengthen and rebuild my leg muscles. 150 degrees of movement is nearly heel to butt!
To be continued................................
No, this is not the end of my Motocross Career!
Read my mission statement!
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