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Minor Setback

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I haven't blogged in almost 8 weeks. Ouch.

However, I like to think I have a good excuse -- at least for a good portion of that time.

On April 17, 2009, I broke my left leg in 6 places skiing one of my favorite runs at Mary Jane called "Outhouse." I've skied it countless times before, but the snow had been falling very heavy the previous day and into the morning, and consequently the bumps were rather "choppy" and it was just one of those fluke accidents where my ski binding did not release when it should have. Let's just say that the human ankle isn't meant to rotate 90 degrees :-(

It took two surgeries -- and a lot more metal than I'd prefer to have in my body -- to put me back together again.

In the first operation (performed the night of my accident), the surgeon attached an "external fixator" to my shin, ankle, and foot in order to hold it all in place for about a week in order for the swelling to go down.

Figure 1: Broken tibia - external fixator

See full-sized image.

In the second operation, the surgeon removed the "external fixator" and implanted an "internal fixator." Let's just say that you really don't want to be behind me in the airport security screening line.

In the last X-ray that I saw, the lower half of my left leg looks like one big metal lattice. It took the surgeon about 4-1/2 hours to complete the second surgery (an hour longer than originally planned).

Unfortunately, while the first surgery was relatively noneventful, the second was not. It involved two of the worst nights -- from a physical pain perspective -- that I've ever experienced.

The good news is that the pain is quite manageable now -- actually it has been since I left the hospital after my second surgery. The bad news is that I can't put any weight on my left leg for 12 weeks after the second operation. At least I've greatly improved my ability for going up and down stairs on crutches.

I've even been working for the past 4 weeks, rejoining a project where we are helping a large, international company deploy an Internet platform based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. I just prop my leg up on a filing cabinet here in my home office and I'm good to go ;-)

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