Le Chateau Reperation - Post #8

My stay at Chateau la Reparation was four days deep. Day One highlights involved check in, lot's of fancy pictures, a tray of really shitty food and ................drugs! My first taste of morphine brought me the blessed pain relief I so badly needed. It had been about four hours since impact by the time they had decided that 'feet' were the only issue. Not head. Not neck or back and certainly not cut lip. Which had to be explained to every nurse in emergency through out each shift as they arrived. With Angel receiving, what I felt was, an inordinate amount of praise, high fives and 'Go Girl" from most of 'em for Clockin' the Dufus in the manner that she did. But yes, I deserved it.

Rather remarkable stuff, morphine. Little did I know that much later in my life, it would become a staple of my daily diet. But for now, the blessed relief was almost instantaneous following injection. And every muscle that had been straining and screaming and tensed beyond capacity for the last four hours, suddenly released and relaxed and I could lay back and close my eyes.

I was sleeping when they came to transfer me out of emergency to admit me to my own room. The x-rays had indicated that the damage was significant enough that I would need to be admitted for a few days. Primarily so the 'Feet Bags' could deflate which would then allow the doctors to decide how they are going to treat. And what was to treat, was two broken feet. One simple. One not so much. Unbeknownst to me at the time, of course, was the knowledge that the ankle is deemed the most complicated joint in the human body. There is a lot going on in there, not the least of which is it's capacity for weight bearing. Unfortunately, as I was soon to discover, damage to this joint if significant enough, is often irreparable.

The x-rays showed clearly that I had shattered my calcaneus in my left foot.

The heel bone. And I had cracked the bone in my right heel in two pieces. Vertically, almost dead centre. The left had taken most of the initial impact as a result of my grabbing the eves trough with my right hand on the way down. That small tug shifted my descent just enough to cause the left foot to touch down first. And unfortunately, as far as the current state of the art in orthopedic surgery goes, as it pertains to ankle joints anyway, you do not fully recover from a shattered calcaneus. Ever. Or at least until the technology advances and improves.

The right foot wasn't going to be the problem. The shattering of the left heel had compromised the joining of the foot to the ankle where the lower leg bone, the tibia 'socket' sits atop the heel. The heel had flattened pushing the bone outwards horizontally, impeding any future, proper functioning of the joint. I didn't get any of this at the time. I couldn't have cared any less. I was high as the proverbial kite soaring on the breeze. And who needs feet to soar on the breeze? Angel understood the news before I did. It appears in the early stages at least, this little escaped of mine was going to have long lasting repercussions. To see further technical details