Surgery #3 Complete!!!

Overall a success. This one went an hour longer than planned (4 ½ hours total) b/c apparently the ankle and foot were in worse shape than Dr. Beals originally thought. Good news is he cleaned a lot of the bad stuff out and was able to preserve the calcaneocuboid joint without fusing it. A bone graft (about an 8 mm wedge) was taken from my pelvis and inserted into the calcaneous bone just behind the calcaneocuboid joint. I was happy to hear he didn't fuse this joint which is responsible for about 15 degrees side-to-side motion. He had a hard time finding the subtalar joint b/c it was already so smashed together and it was basically fused from the orginal impact. Once he did find it via x-ray, he corrected the alignment and put two screws through the joint - subtalar fusion. He also tightened the deltoid and spring ligaments and removed a lot of dead bone and scar tissue from the entire ankle/foot area. He is pleased with the way it turned out and I should get more motion out of it from what I had even prior to the subtalar fusion.

I stayed in the hospital two nights and came home this afternoon. The Park City Medical Center staff were great and the experience was overall very pleasant even for having to go through the whole surgery rigamarole. You almost feel like you're staying at a prestigious mountain resort if you can look past the nurses, doctors, and patients. I would recommend this place to anyone who flies off a cliff and needs surgery.

Here's my beautiful leg. Pretty ain't it? I had a nerve block inserted into the back of my leg where the medicine was delivered from the balloon inside the baby bottle. The nerve block stayed in for two days and took all feeling out my leg from the knee down.

There's my urinal glistening in the morning sunrise. Pretty views outside my room made convalescing not so bad in this hospital. Although I didn't sleep much at all the first night.

Back to the familiar couch scene... and my lil' buddy...