# Ankle fracture, Pilon fracture.



## toahk (Jun 12, 2006)

What's up everyone?

Wanted to tell my story, seems like when you hurt yourself its always good to get some search results that match.

October 2014, hit a big booter and overshot it, ditched the bike and landed on my feet. Lo and behold my ankle is now sitting everted 90 degrees. Right ankle was just flopping around like a wet noodle, I immediately grabbed it wrenched it back "in place, knew right away it was time to get off the mountain and to the ER! Luckily one my riding partners had an ankle brace he wore, so I strapped it on my ankle and had them stand me up, only to find that my left ankle was toasted too! Not flopping around, but couldn't put any weight on the heel.

I had them sit me on my bike, so I could ride down. Luckily, I still had shock on my side so the pain hadn't set in yet. I was able to roll myself down the hill, knees on the pedals, seat dropper slammed all the way down, with the help of one of my buddies. My girlfriend picked me up at the bottom of the trail, and we headed to the ER.

At the ER, had to wait forever it seemed, I guess on a Saturday afternoon there isn't a whole lot of help there. They ended up flying me out to another hospital out of county for surgery the next day.

So a lot of dilauted (hydromorphone, super pain killer), a CT scan, and seemed like forever without food, I went into surgery Sunday afternoon around 4. Two big ass incisions on either side of my leg, my leg was "repaired'. Seems as if I broke some metatarsuls in the left ankle as well, along with a chip avulsion fracture and severe sprain, non operative.

Was discharged on Tuesday am, driven home, and told to keep it elevated and chill out until stitches would be removed 2 weeks later. Well I tell you what, I hardly remember the first two weeks; percocet and netflix was about all I did. Luckily I had a lovely girlfriend that took care of me, sponge bath and all.

Fast forward a few more weeks and I began PT (at around 4 or 5 weeks). Initially it was doing a whirlpool bath upon showing up, a little bit of cycling on the trainer, some leg lifts, and simple band stretches. I was doing PT 2x per week, doing some balance exercises, wobble board, assisted ankle raises, etc, and it was feeling good. Fast forward to 12 weeks, I had my syndesmosis screws removed. The syndesmosis joint spans the tibia and filbula, and mine was basically torn, so they had to fixate the two together with multiple screws.

Right now I am walking, albeit rather gimpy, with the stitches still in from the syndesmosis screw removal. My heel is completely numb, so it feels like I have a big cushion under my foot at all times, but I have gotten used to that. I begin PT again later this week after my stitches are removed, and will keep updating this thread as I progress.

Cheers,

John


----------

