Happy surgery anniversary to me…

One year ago yesterday I had the ankle arthroscopy and debridement that gave me back my life. I thought I’d give thanks by briefly retelling my story for those of you struggling right now.

In September of 2005, I sprained my ankle. It healed up nicely within 2 or 3 weeks, though. The next May, I sprained it again, and again in the fall. After the third one, it was never really right, though I was too busy to think much of it, and as a young person with mild fibromyalgia, I’d learned to live life and be happy even in pain.

Valentine’s day 2007, I woke up with the ankle so swollen I could barely move it, though I didn’t remember any injury. I made a doctor’s appointment, got x-rays, and was prescribed two weeks in the boot and physical therapy. I did my exercises faithfully, and they worked. The joint became stable again, and I was able to walk without pain. In fact, I haven’t turned it since.

But no sprains did not apparently mean no pain. Though I waited months, I didn’t regain the ability to run, dance, or even walk easily on uneven ground. I went back to the medical side. Had an MRI, normal, more PT, worse than useless.

Just before Halloween 2007, my ankle started to get worse again. I bought a cane so I could get out of my apartment. Some days, I needed crutches instead. My doctor could offer no explanation, so I went elsewhere. “The MRI says you are fine, so why are you crying? You really need to be medicated for depression.”

It took seeing 4 surgeons before I found one that I trusted who seemed to know what was what. He told me that, based on symptoms and physical exam, I probably had something called anterolateral impingement syndrome. MRI apparently misses it a lot, but key findings are limited range of motion, sharp pain when squatting, (or when descending stairs, in bad cases), and sometimes a visibly swollen area sitting on the lateral malleolus.

He did a cortisone injection at a very specific place to confirm the diagnosis. I got pretty good relief, and called to schedule the surgery around the beginning of February. Told I’d have to wait six weeks, I joked that the groundhog must have seen his shadow.

The procedure was easy, they told me later. They found a lesion, removed it, then wrapped me up in a splint for a week and a half. By two days after the splint came off, my range of motion was better than it had been before. Less than 4 weeks after the surgery, I was getting around reasonably well, and at seven and a half weeks post-op, I went hiking.

I still have two neat little scars at the front of my ankle. I still have a small numb place on the side of my big toe. I think of it as a reminder to take nothing for granted.

God bless.