Yep, that's my ankle in the ED, four times normal size! On March 1, I was running down a steep hill for the bus to school when I rolled my right ankle and fell on top of it. I heard a crack, but my joints are always cracking so I didn't think too much of it, and I thought I just sprained my ankle. Luckily there was another woman up the street who came to help me, and I was able to stand and walk slowly and carefully. I walked in pain to the bus stop and waited for the next bus to school. I figured I would just walk to the ED from school, since it's connected, but once I got into the building, I couldn't walk anymore. Just as I was asking the woman at the security desk to call a transport, one of my friends walked by and took me down to the ED in a wheelchair!
My ED attending happened to be one of my facilitators from our biostat course in the beginning of the year! He was awesome and continued to come back and check on me. I got x-rays taken and he was looking at them as soon as they were in the system. He came to tell me that I broke my ankle, breaking a good chunk off the fibula (one of the two bones in the lower leg, the tip of which is the lateral malleolus, which is that bony protrusion on the ankle -- the part in the above picture that is huge!). I had to wait for an orthopedic consult to get a better look at the x-ray and see if I needed surgery. I'm just glad I had cute toes...everyone was complimenting me on them!
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| Cast material being prepared |
An ortho resident came to see me and reviewed my x-rays, telling me I had a Weber A fracture, which thankfully doesn't require surgery. I asked if he could explain the x-ray to me, since I couldn't pick out the break. He started explaining it to me in extremely simplified terms, but then I told him that I was a medical student, and he was surprised! He explained the x-ray to me in more detail, and we chatted about first year classes (I was in microbio at the time) while he laid out the materials to put my leg in a splint. Apparently microbio is extremely easy at the med school he attended, and he didn't believe me when I said it was the hardest class at Pitt. Another resident (a Pitt Med alum!) came to help him splint my leg, and she backed me up about the microbio :) Ha! After four hours in the ER, I was discharged with a fashionable open splint, a pair of crutches, and instructions to schedule a follow-up with an orthopedic surgeon the following week.
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| My open splint. I was sad it was not pink. |
Since I couldn't get around very well on crutches to leave the hospital, one of my friends wheeled me back to the med school, where we got a room to study. I guess word of my injury spread quickly, because so many people came to visit! That made me feel a lot better. That evening, my friend drove me home and helped me get to my apartment. It took me forever to get down the hall to my apartment because I had zero endurance on crutches. But I finally made it! I am so thankful for my amazing friends! I don't know what I would have done without all their help and support that day!
Since I broke my right ankle, driving was completely out of the question. I was also not allowed to put any weight on my right leg, and I couldn't go very far on the crutches, so I had no idea how I was going to get to my doctor's appointment or get to school every day. Also, my laundry room requires going down a flight of stairs, and I didn't want to impose on my friends to do laundry or get groceries for me. My mom offered to come out and stay with me, and for a while I thought I was going to be able to manage on my own, but by the end of the day, I asked her to come.
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| My two transportation methods |
We had our big microbiology exam exactly a week later, so I was extremely thankful that my mom was able to come and help me while I studied. I have such an amazing mommy!
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| Waiting to get fitted for my boot |
Two days before my exam, I had a follow-up appointment with an orthopedic surgeon. He checked out my ankle and told me I could not bear weight for another 6-8 weeks. That meant my mom would be staying with me for a while longer. I was SO happy to get that splint cut off! I had it on for 5 days and my leg just wanted to breathe and move! I was fitted for a pneumatic walking boot, which I was allowed to take off for showering and while sitting.
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| New boot! |
I took my microbio exam that Friday and then we were on our way home for spring break! It was going to be a week of relaxing at home and not doing anything related to med school. I needed a break! I got to see my nephew's karate tournament, so that was really fun! We also had fun taking pictures of all the awesome bruising going on around my ankle...
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| My rainbow of bruises... |
Spring break was over as quickly as it started, and it was time to head back to Pittsburgh for our neuroscience course. I was very much looking forward to neuro, since I majored in neuroscience in undergrad, but I knew it was still going to be challenging!
One of the upsides of going back to school was that we got permission to bring our dog with us! My building doesn't allow dogs, but we got special permission to have him there until the end of March, just because my dad travels a lot and we didn't want to have my dog in a kennel for that long. He liked to lay by me while I studied!
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| Puppy guards me while I study with my feet elevated |
Two weeks passed and it was time to take my dog home. My mom still had to come back with me, since I still had a few more weeks of non-weight bearing, but we saved him a lot of kennel time for having him with us for a couple weeks. We went home for a long weekend, but then it was back to school!
By that point, I had built up enough upper body strength to be able to get around rather well at school. I had another follow-up appointment 7 weeks after the break, when I was allowed to put as much weight on my right leg as tolerated while in the boot, and I also had to start physical therapy. PT was very hard at first, and at my second appointment, almost 9 weeks after I broke my ankle, I took my first steps without the boot and without crutches. Since I was non-weight bearing for so long, the muscles in my right leg had atrophied so much that my knee and ankle were not supported well. I had to slowly increase the amount of time wearing a sneaker on my right foot and walking around, from 1 hour on Friday, to 2 hours on Saturday, to 3 hours on Sunday, etc. After 5 weeks of physical therapy and lots of different stretches and exercises, I was able to walk pretty well without crutches! (And a day after my last PT appointment, I was DONE with my first year of med school!!!!)
Fast forward a few weeks to today: it's been almost 3 months since I broke my ankle, and although I am mostly recovered, I'm not out of the woods yet! I don't have a full range of motion in my ankle, so it takes me a while to go up and down stairs and inclines. Now that I'm home for a bit, I've been walking my dog with my mom to build endurance, about a mile every day, but it's often painful to walk on uneven ground like grass. I still have a bit of a limp, but it has definitely gotten better since I started walking at home! I have another follow-up appointment in a month and I'm hoping I'll be cleared to start jogging, because I have a 5K to run in the fall!
So that's been my life for the last 3 months! I'll be going back to Pittsburgh next month for the same program I did last summer, so for now I'm just relaxing at home and enjoying my freedom from med school. I'll be doing a lot of cooking, so expect some yummy updates! :)
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