A little over a year ago, Tom sprained his ankle while we were out on the softball field. At first the injury was treated with a cheap ankle brace. The take home instructions were to stay off of it and R.I.C.E it frequently. Well, that didn't work. He continued to work 2 jobs on it. He put a lot of miles on an already fragile ankle.
A year and a lot of pain later he has no other option but to have ankle ligament/tendon reconstructive surgery. Yep... the whole shabang! He went from a
First degree sprain:
* Some stretching or mild tearing of the ligament.
* Little or no functional loss - the joint can still function and bear some weight (...but hurts!!!).
* Mild pain
* Some swelling
* Some joint stiffness.
To a
Second degree sprain:
* Total rupture of a ligament - there is a loss of motion
* Gross instability of the joint - joint function is lost
* Severe pain initially followed by no pain
* Severe swelling
in a matter of months... all because he could not stay off it or go to regular PT appointments :(
He recently saw the surgeon and went over options. Surgery was the only solution... see he wound up tearing the ligaments in the lateral ligament complex...which is made up of the anterior talofibular ligament, calcaneofibular ligament and posterior talofibular ligament (see diagram 1) AND has a peroneal ankle tendon, tear.
The following diagram might put things into perspective. Pretty much the entire lateral side of his right foot is blown. 
Surgery itself is about an hour long. Recovery time is minimum 12 weeks with no weight on it. We are currently working on a wheelchair. If one is not covered with insurance, we can rent one for $170.00 for 8 weeks. He needs to have a 22" wc because of his size... so pricing them is tricky. But with a lot of crossed fingers we will find one and overcome this hump :)
No comments:
Post a Comment