Ouch. Sorry to hear about your injury, heal well!
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Today I learned about something called an external fixator, which is the thing you see here. It is screwed into my leg bones. I managed to impress quite a few people with the x-rays of my tibial plateau fracture.
I’m so grateful for the wonderful Snowbird Ski Patrol who plucked me off a very difficult spot on the mountain and brought me down safely, as well as the EMTs who transported me and all the amazing people here at Intermountain Hospital.
I'm sorry to see your post, @Chris Walker. After surviving DH racing this winter you wreck on a little cornice drop. I hope you have a speedy and painfree recovery.
PT is as important as the surgeries but in the event you've never had an injury that required it, do what the PT says; not more, not less. It is really easy for eager folks to overdo it and create more trouble than they are remedying.
TPF/MCL busters, unite!
OK, not really. I'm sorry, I can sure relate, although yours looks FAR worse than mine was. You're smart to get it all fixed right away. Make sure to follow up on other soft tissue injuries. My MCL tear flew under the radar for 3 years, and now I get to live with it.
And, biking is great PT for it, once you're cleared to do so.
Hang in there...
I solved the muscle difference issue with recovery from my tibia plateau fracture by blowing out the achilles tendon on the other leg.
That sucks.
It’s 5 years since my tibial plateau fracture / complete MCL tear / partial ACL tear injury, also in Utah. I got lucky in that the fracture didn’t displace, so no surgery for me.
I had a a long hard 7 months of 3 or 4 times a week physical therapy, on top of the exercises they gave me to do at home.
The fracture not displacing was huge in accelerating the time table to get back to normal. I had my first day back skiing 10 months after the injury, although it was probably 2 years before both of my legs felt pretty much the same again.
After getting through all of the range of motion and stability stuff so that my injured leg was fully functional again, the biggest challenge for me was getting the muscle mass back where my leg had basically atrophied in the few months after the injury. By the 2 year point, my legs functioned similarly and both felt strong, but I could still see a difference in muscle mass. By year 3, it was tough to tell any difference in size. At year 5, I struggle sometimes to remember which leg was injured.
This is a long winded way of saying do your work, make sure you have good doctors and therapists, and although it will take time, you will get back to normal.
Good luck with your recovery and please feel free to hit me up if you have any questions on the recovery process.