I saw the trauma specialist today

After being in limbo since July 14th I had an appointment with the Orthopaedic Traumatologist at Union Memorial Hospital today. There were some battles with Workman's Comp to get the visit approved and logistics with their red tape, mainly complicated by a woman who from all indications hates her job and takes it out on anyone who asks anything of her. That's a whole other story though.

In many ways this visit went about how I expected it to - the doctor looked at my films and recommended that I have surgery to rebuild the area that was crushed (which is now collapsing) and attempt to fix the alignment of my knee joint.

Dr. Brumback is very blunt and does not sugar coat anything. That's great, but it did hit me (and especially Danielle) like cold water in the face though. He made no promises about increased range of motion. He agreed that I was not a very good candidate for knee replacement (full or partial). He took my x-rays down the hall to the joint replacement guy who concurred. He said that one of his main objectives would be to get the top of my tibia repaired to the point that I would be a better candidate for a knee replacement. He really stressed the fact that this was a severe break that would dog me for the rest of my life and did not paint a very rosy picture of my prognosis. I guess that's better than over promising and under delivering.

I knew that this would be a big deal again, but hearing the details laid out by him was sobering. He'll have to remove the metal plate and screws that are currently there. He will have to re-break the bone and rebuild the top of the tibia where there is now a sizable depression. He also explained that the top of my tibia has been spreading out as the depression gets deeper and he will need to make it narrower. The top of the tibia should be as wide as the bottom of the femur and mine is no where close right now. I'll get a new metal plate and more screws. I will then be "non weight bearing" again for 6 to 12 weeks depending on how I heal.

When asked how soon he could do the surgery his answer was "When do you want to do it?" So, scheduling doesn't seem to be an issue on his end. I'm going to take the weekend to think it over and see if any additional questions come to mind, but there really doesn't seem to be much of a decision to make.

1. Stay as is and adjust my lifestyle accordingly.
2. Attempt a knee replacement that everyone has counselled me to wait as long as possible to do. (not to mention the news today that I'm not really a good candidate)
3. Give this a shot. Hope it improves my quality of life and allows me to put off the replacement for a few years. Worst case - it makes me a better candidate for a successful replacement after my bones have healed from this surgery.

More than anything I'm just trying to digest all that he said and make peace with going back to square one in many ways. Anesthesia and surgery worry me, pain pills have all sorts of negative ties associated with them, and the thought of being non-weight-bearing until Thanksgiving or possibly Christmas is just depressing.

Not surprising, but cold water in the face none the less.