| Goodbye Fixator
just got in from a fun day at the ortho clinic...please excuse the typing....vicoden mmmm.
...i was supposed to have my fixator removed and a bone graph 2 weeks ago, but i ran in to issues with my insurance company over and mri. so things have been delayed. anyway the my dr atleast wanted to get this fixator off. he called me monday around 8:30 pm from his personal phone after a weekend on call, he was either exhausted or drunk. suggested he would come in on his day off (today) just for me and in his exact words "i'll numb you up real good with a local and we'll have a go at ripping that thing off". i should mention that my doc is cool as hell, he is my age and has to ask for alot of consultations but when we disscuse my ankle he talks to me more like a drinking buddy than a dr. my last ortho doc talked to his tape recorder more than he talked to me. i much prefer this guy.
now mind you i just got a local, nothing else...no morphine or even percocet so i was quite awake for the whole thing. the removel process was not what i expected. after many very painful injections of litacane (sp?) to the screw sites the brace mechanic busted out the wrenches and started to take off all the external stuff. no pain, no problem. when the doc found the right tool...a T handle with a small drill chuck on it....he tightened it down on one of the pins in my foot. FUCKING OUCH!!! now, i consider myself a pretty tough guy thanks to the marine corps (pain is weakness leaving the body) but the first few twists as it came free of the bone hurt pretty darn bad. once the screw was free from the bone though no more pain. the rod through my heal was one long piece so we had to chop it down to a more managable size with a fullsized set of bolt cutters. than one of the screws in my shin got stuck. no matter how hard we tightened the chuck it would still spin. the problem was solved by working it back and forth with a monkey wrench for afew minutes....did i mention ouch!! each time a screw was removed the hole bled like a stab wound, by the time we were done there was a huge puddle of blood and iodine under my foot.
before we got started a nurse asked me if i was ever going to ride again....um, yes. she than told me of the poor patient she saw yesterday that was reduced to a drooling handicap for the rest of his life...supposedly he to was wearing full gear. honestly i'm running out of ways to respond to these people. hospital people do not like bikes and now i know why. the ortho clinic has been jammed to the gills with bike accident victims since summer started. at no point was i ever the only biker in the waiting room. though i did notice i was the only one there with no road rash scars from my accident.
ok sorry for the long story...the doctor did let me keep a carbon fiber rod from my fixator when i told him i wanted to make a shift linkadge for the bike from it. sorry pete, i tried to snag a second one for you but they sterilize them and send them off to hospitals in third world countrys apparently.
oh yeah and the healing is going awesome. doc says i'm making amazing (and baffling) progress. the bone chips that used to be part of my ankle are actually reforming into a soild bone and it's attaching itself to the undamaged half of bone that is growing out to meet it. might not even need the bone graph after all...i am the wolverine bitches!!  | 
07-03-08, 11:46 AM
Too bad about the cf rod, but if it can help someone else less fortunate than I, so be it 
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