Under the Knife-The Quigley medical saga continues...

After spending four weeks on crutches for what we thought was a stress fracture in my ankle, we finally got into the foot and ankle specialist two days ago. Good news: It isn't broken. Bad news: They are pretty much going to have to break it to fix it.

(Semi-boring back story) For years my ankle has been a little upset with me after I would run. The last year it would whine like a three yr old whenever I walked barefoot and the few months, it flat out yelled at me after I worked out. But I'm  Mom and busy taking care of everyone else so I'd limp around for a bit and then be fine. Till I changed my running workouts to include sprints. I got about three laps in and my ankle quit complaining and started screaming at me. I limped on it some more for a couple days and realized it wasn't going to get better so I sucked up my "I am invincible" pride and made an appointment. The family doc said it was most likely a stress fracture and told me to get a boot (unluckily we have had several to choose from, thank you Paxton and your torn Achilles tendon) and some crutches and stay off it till we could get into a specialist.

In the mean time Paxton had plans to attend a family reunion in Alaska (of all the inconvenient places) to go salmon fishing. I wish I was the wife that could let him go with a smile and give him wonderful moral support from the couch while he was out catching food to put on our table like a good husband should. BUT.... I was a little grouchy about being left with four kids and crutches. It didn't take long to remember that I DON'T sit well. Even my mom joked about getting me ADHD meds so I could actually sit down like I was supposed to. Figuring my sanity was at least as important as my physical well being. I decided there were much more entertaining places to sit than on my couch.

After the girls help in making my crutches appropriately stylish, we set out to party for what was left of the summer. Crutches didn't stop me, it just slowed me down. We still hit the beach, the aquarium, and the parade.

We managed to make it to Dart Zone (Nerf kid-combat teams) practice and gymnastics. We even fit in a few fun projects like making nerf dart blow guns. I also had to shoot my summer weddings on crutches but thanks to an amazing 10 yr old daughter that worked with me for 8 hours straight, I managed. 

Then last week I finally got in to the specialist who looked at my X-ray, took new X-rays and preformed a painful series of tests on my foot that could have possibly made Chuck Norris cry. Then let us know that there wasn't any stress fracture but that was about the ONLY thing not wrong with it. The first thing he pointed out was that the where my leg bones met my ankle bones, the bones should be round like a baby's bum, mine however were completely jagged and pointed like the Sawtooth mountains; bone spurs. Then he showed us that between the ankle bones (technically called a gutter) there was a whole bunch of what looked like gravel but that was in fact  bits of bone that had broken off the bone spurs and collected between the bones and that is what was causing most of the grating feeling and pain in my ankle. Finally he said that at sometime I must have damaged my ankle (varsity soccer and basket ball anyone?) The tendons in my foot were so lose that my leg bones had actually moved apart at my ankle and my ankle could move left to right when it should only move up and down. At least that is my understanding of what he explained minus several six syllable words. Bottom line: Surgery to grind down the bone spurs, clean out the loose bone fragments, add a screw to put my leg bones back into place, a "zip-tie" to put my ankle bones back in place and then cinch up the loose tendons. Then eight weeks in a cast, non-weight bearing. Perfect way to end the summer (insert raspberry here). I've decided that large game tranquilizer darts may be necessary to keep me down for eight weeks or maybe I'll finally learn to be patient. But probably not.