The Pillars of the Earth 

3/7/2008 – the surgery
So, this is the big day! I was really not looking forward to surgery, even if it was just foot / ankle surgery. Mom was very sweet and came up to take me.
Before I left in the morning, I wrote a little note for my doctor / surgeon:

Everything went very well (only three screws, not five!), except I panicked a bit when I first woke up after being under anesthesia. I had one of those little air masks on to make sure I was getting enough oxygen, but my nose was running and I hated that mask. Also, I wasn’t supposed to be in any pain, but ow ow ow, my foot REALLY hurt when I woke up.
After we got back from my surgery, surprisingly, I wasn’t sleepy. So I taught Mom how to play Guitar Hero and waited up for David to come check on me when he got done with work.
All in all, I’d say it went very well.

2/27/2008 – another doctor visit
It’s Wednesday now, and after 4 days of not being able to walk, I am starting to think this is a very serious injury!
As soon as Dr. Rush looks at my ankle, based on bruising and swelling, he says that he thinks it’s highly likely that I have some sort of fracture. Especially once I tell him how the injury happened and mention that there’s an anomaly on my initial x-rays
He sends me off for “weight-bearing” x-rays from a completely different view point from the first set I had done on Monday. The first set were all with me laying down and turning my foot in different directions.
I have to say, it’s not that fun to get on and off a small step stool, and put weigh on an injured ankle. And yeah, it was broken!! All I had to say to my doctor on the matter was “I hope those x-rays were worth it to you, that HURT!”
Anyway, yup, weight-bearing x-rays clearly showed a fractured talus bone. The only problem is, x-rays can only show so much, and without a better view, my doctor says he can’t tell how bad the fracture is or if I’ll need surgery. This means I have to get a CT scan, but those things take time to get an appointment.
In the meantime, I was put in cast. Unfortunately, not a nice light fiberglass cast, but a BIG heavy plaster cast. It was better than nothing though, and clearly, I wasn’t walking anywhere anyway.
3/4/2008 – CT scan
10 days after my injury, and I’m finally getting a CT scan. My doctor insisted they get me in ASAP, but even so, it still was a week later.
I’ve never had an MRI, and I had never had a CT scan either. It’s not that exciting, my leg went in a tube that rotated around and took lots of pictures.
CT scan shows clearly that my talus is not only completely fractured, the fractured piece has rotated out of place and it’s fractured slightly in another direction perpendicular to the main break. This, according to Dr. Rush, means 3 to 5 screws. 3 if he can get into to do the repairs easily, 5 if he has to saw off the malleolus of my tibia (the bony part that sticks out on the inside of your ankle), because that will take 2 additional screws to reattach.

I really meant to do this in real time, as the injury and recovery were happening, but I never got around to it, so now I am going back in time to catch up to today.
2/23/2008 – injury day
On Saturday, February 23rd 2008, Ray (my roommate) and I went to Touchstone in San Jose to do some indoor bouldering style rock climbing. I had just recently been introduced to top-rope climbing (which is much safer) and was in the process of switching from bouldering to top-rope as my main climbing.
It all started here, on this pink V2 bouldering problem.

I had been working on this problem for about 2 sessions, and just couldn’t finish it. On the rare occasions I did get close, I would chicken out before even attempting the final move.
Ray was able to do it in about 2 or three tries, although he did come very very close to falling from the top of the wall, just barely managing to get his feet back on the wall. After this, of course now I had to try the final move. Ray was very encouraging and so I went for it.
BIG MISTAKE. I was able to grab the final hold, the one with the \__/ shaped pink (and green) tape under it at the top of the wall, but I wasn’t able to hold on, and my other hand wasn’t holding anything and both my feet lost their place on the wall. I came crashing down pretty fast, missed the crash pad, and was just pushed to safety by Ray.
Unfortunately, I landed on my left ankle, sort of on / off the crash pads. I think my ankle might have even landed right in between the three crash pads at the base of this wall. Right away the nice Touchstone staff brought me ice and advil (and told me that they were positive it was just a bad sprain), and I did my best to hold back tears.
I’ve been told in the past that I’m a “wuss” and that I must have a very low pain tolerance, but let me tell you, that is completely wrong. I managed to make it through this with little more than glistening eyes, and it HURT!
At this point, we’d been climbing for oh, not more than 20 minutes. There was no way I could walk, let alone climb, so after sitting for about a half hour, I hopped my way into the locker room, and very gingerly changed back into my regular street clothes. I think it was karma, or bad luck, or something, because I was wearing a Roots t-shirt that says “Canada” on the back. I was jinxed from the start!
After waiting what seemed like forever, Ray picked me up in his car, and we went to In N Out for lunch. By now, I had lost my appetite, so I really didn’t eat anything.
My ankle was already swelling, but there was no bruising yet.

Since it was my left ankle, and because I drive a manual transmission Civic, there was no way I could drive. I sent David a message telling him I was “injured” and he was nice enough not to say I told you so (since his opinion is that all climbing should involve a rope and harness). He came and picked me up and carried me up the stairs at his place so I wouldn’t have to hop on one foot.
For the rest of the weekend, I tried to ice and elevate as much as possible, but it didn’t seem to be helping. There was no way I could even put my foot flat on the floor to stand, let alone walk on it.
2/25/2008 – first doctor visit (one of many)

On Monday, I took the day off from work, and David drove me home. I still wasn’t convinced I needed to go to a doctor, but David insisted. Ray happened to be home that day, and offered to take me, so I called and got an appointment. Podiatry said they could see me in 10 days (which is just ridiculous, by the way), but said if I saw a primary care doctor and got a referral I could be seen sooner.
At the medical center, I got a wheelchair (fun, except Ray pushes a wheelchair like it’s a race car) and was seen pretty promptly by the doctor. He took a look at my ankle and sent me for x-rays. After the x-rays were ready, he looked those over and said it looked like I had a “small bone chip” in the ankle area but that may or may not have anything to do with the current injury, it could have been there a long time. He wrote me a referral for a “severe ankle sprain” and sent me home with an aircast. We stopped at the pharmacy and I bought a pair of crutches. All this hopping was really tiring out my right leg and not much fun.
Late Monday night was when the bruising became really apparent.