Triple Arthrodesis

Triple Arthrodesis
Originally uploaded by terpkristin.

Finally I was able to get a picture of my xray up on the web. This is my ankle after my surgery on 25 June 2004, where Dr. Mark Myerson performed a triple arthrodesis (complete fusion), sural neurectomy (removal of a portion of the sural nerve), and Chrisman-Snook lateral ligament reconstruction (well, to be honest, a re-re-reconstruction). What can I say, I was a mess. If you click on the picture, it should take you to its flickr page where you can roll your mouse over a few of the notes I added.

For those who don't remember or don't know, the fusion was not the first surgery I had on my ankle and in fact was only performed because I had three prior failed surgeries. My injury progression was:
3 July 2001: Initial injury (acute ankle sprain), which happened when I went up for a head ball while playing soccer and came down on the outside of my ankle/foot intead. OUCH. It turned out that the 3 main ligaments on the outside of my ankle had completely snapped--not just torn or stretched, but snapped right apart.
27 July 2001 & 20 December 2001: Shoulder surgeries. Not related to the ankle at all, but because of these surgeries, I didn't worry too much about my ankle until I was ready to try to play soccer again and couldn't.
mid-March 2002: Realized I could barely walk without rolling my ankle so saw my orthopaedic surgeon. He advised physical therapy to strengthen the muscles that support the ankle.
mid-June 2002: PT's laughed at me because my ankle was so bad that we couldn't even keep it from rolling DURING rehab. They sent me back to my surgeon.
15 August 2002: Ankle surgery #1. Watson-Jones procedure to repair the ankle ligaments by using a graft from the peroneus brevis tendon.
First half of 2003: Still in pain following ankle surgery #1, I continue to do rehab. Finally I get referred to a different surgeon, Dr. Paul Cooper at Georgetown University Hospital.
6 August 2003: Dr. Cooper performs ankle surgery #2, an arthroscopic debriedment of my ankle and an open reconstruction of the peroneal tendons (brevis and longus) and re-reconstruction of the lateral ligaments.
24 December 2003: Dr. Cooper performs ankle surgery #3, where he intended to use a cadeaver tendon to re-reconstruct my peroneal tendons (see above). When he got in there, though, he discovered that the muscle in my calf/foot was atrophied to an extent that he couldn't attach the tendon anywhere (this is what happens when you can't exercise for over a year due to pain). Instead, he ended up detaching a tendon from the bottom of my foot and re-routing it behind my tib/fib and used it to "recreate" my peroneus brevis and longus.
25 June 2004: All other surgeries had failed and my gait was severely affected, I finally saw Dr. Mark Myerson who recommended the triple arthrodesis and other procedures. While I can't say that I'm yet 100% pain-free, my gait is mostly normal again and though I'll never run or really jump again, I'm slowly returning to an active life (mostly biking, and I'd be more active if I had a job so I could have insurance so I could get back into physical therapy).