Counting Blessings

Part 1: It Can Always Be Worse

On January 29th, I underwent a two and half hour surgery to fix the damage to my right ankle. My ankle was injured on May 22, 2013 when a Toyota Forerunner pulled directly in front of me while I was riding my road bike.

I was lucky that this monster SUV did not run over me. Had I been a tenth of a second earlier, a would had been crushed under the tires of this massive vehicle. I am just counting my blessings. Slamming into the side of the gigantic wall of silver sheet metal hurt me very badly but I am still here.

I was also fortunate to find a highly skilled and distinguished Orthopedic Surgeon that was able to get me on his surgery schedule in less than a week. A big bonus is that this doctor has a keen sense of humor. He scheduled my surgery as the last one of the day so he could take his time just in case there was more damage that the imaging showed. He told me that my injury was as bad as he had ever seen in a patient that could still walk.

The good news is the doctor was able to reconstruct my ankle so there should be no lasting issues, and eventually I should regain 99% use of my right ankle.

After the surgery, the doctor put me a clunky support boot for five days.


When the swelling went down, I was fitted with a temporary cast.


The temporary cast was removed a week later. My ankle was very swollen and the orthopedic techs had a difficult time pulling the stitches. The techs really had to dig deeply to get the stitches out. The stitch removal was not a pleasant experience.

An orthopedic tech that was fresh out of tech school put on my "permanent" cast. I selected a nice deep purple color. Unfortunately, the purple cast was weak, flattened-out and pinched my toes. I went back to the doctor's office to get another cast refit. The same rookie tech removed the defective cast and installed a green colored cast. This green cast was brittle and started to crack and split. I wrapped the defective cast with duct tape to get me through the weekend. I made an appointment for 7:00AM Monday for yet another cast refit. I was nervous that I would get the rookie again.

To my surprise and delight, the young woman that had put on my red temporary cast was assigned to fit my new cast. This woman tech is very experienced and she fitted me with a bullet-proof orange cast.



This new cast is solid as a rock and reasonably comfortable.

Part 2: Counting My Blessings

In no particular order, here is a list of my blessings:

(1) When I was clobbered by the Toyota Forerunner I wasn't killed, just dinged-up a bit.
(2) I found a very skilled Orthopedic Surgeon to put my ankle back together.
(3) The two cast refits gave me a chance to scratch my itchy foot and ankle.
(4) I have been careful about eating and have actually lost a little weight.
(5) I got a handicapped placard and get to park in executive parking in the basement of my office building.

(6)The placard is good until May 2014, which is perfect to get me completely healed.
(7) I have plenty of old boot socks that I can cut in half to cover my toes.
(8) I am building a cool new bike just exactly the way I like.
(9) My right foot is not hurting any longer.
(8) My five grown children were texting my wife during my surgery to make sure the "old man" was OK.
(9) My two oldest boys are both engaged to really nice young women that my wife and I really like.
(10) My youngest son won a $50 bet on the Super Bowl.
(11) My youngest son won his bet against me! He agreed that I can payoff the bet by taking him out to eat and I really enjoy his company. We both won.
(12) I can walk so well with the cast that most people don't notice I am injured.
(13) I have a great dog that frets about my injuries and tries to comfort me.
(14) My wife has been doing a lot of stuff that I normally do around the house.
(15) I am getting a lot more mobile and now can resume some of my household duties.
(16) My company is opening a lot of clinics in Europe and Asia, and I am scheduled to start doing some international traveling.
(17) I am getting a promotion.
(18) I am getting back my sense of humor.

I can think of a lot more blessings but I need to go to bed. Thanks for reading my rambling blog.