Living The Nightmare

I've not been posting and this is to explain the why.

Jan 23rd, Jen fell and broke her left fibula and ankle. She had surgery on the 27th to put in a plate and several pins. Her dad happened to be arriving the day after her fall so he was here for a week taking care of her and Jujube.

I arrived here on the 1st. The plan was that I was to take care of Jen and Jules until Steph flew in on the 4th -- and I did so.

However, while Mike was at the airport picking up Steph, I lost my balance and fell while carrying the baby. I did not drop her and she's fine but I ended up busting my right fibula an inch above the ankle and forking up my knee.

Yesterday, I had the followup appt to get a cast on my ankle but the treatment plan changed on Monday when I got a call from Kaiser telling me I had fractured my knee and might need surgery.

This is what I wrote a friend last night -- I'm on a very strong narcotic and it is easier to just cut and paste this (sorry about the lack of capitalization and bad punctuation):

spent most of the afternoon at kaiser -- ct scan, physical exam of leg and a whole lotta back and forth calls between the orthopedist and the orthopedic surgeon going over the results of same. am scheduled for surgery to fix my badly mangled knee on wed morning. they may keep me overnight.

the femur came 'crashing' through the knee joint and ‘pounded’ (the words the fracture clinic doc used) the tibia head at the tibial/patella plateau. it pushed one side of the plateau way way down. there is also a nasty crack on the tibia head just where it starts to curve out to form the head and it doesn’t go all the way through but …. the plan is to lift up the depressed bone, using bone grafts to help keep it up while healing and then put a plate on the outside (fx side) with screws holding it all together.

i was told that this injury is the type of injury that tends to end up with a total knee replacement later on. however on the plus side, altho the injury site is hard for the surgeon to get to, it is the best site for healing since its towards the back instead of the front of the tibia.

doc warned me that i might be overnight ed at the hospital post op. current guestimate is 12 weeks of no weight bearing but that could change post op depending on all the yada yada's the docs say. everything today was just an estimate - won’t really know how long i’ll be laid up until after the surgeon puts me back together again.

the surgery clinic will call me tuesday late afternoon. they will let me know the time of the surgery but its likely to be 0600.

the good news in all this bad news is that i was lucky enough to get one of the highest recommended surgeons. his specialty is trauma orthopedics and i've heard rave reviews about him from several people - guess he's pretty well known up here.

So I'm living on Jen's downstairs sofa and poor Steph has two patients and a baby and house to take care of instead of one patient, etc. I feel guilty about taking resources away from Jen (even though I know logically that I'm not but the mom in me won't stop) and just keep telling myself that the good news is that I did not drop the baby.

Two broken fibula's in the same house 10 days apart. Amazing stroke of bad luck.

I have an appt with the pre-op evaluation center Monday and should know more after that.

Thanks for stopping by. I promise to update on Monday and will have Steph post a post here letting folks know what happens Wed.