Updating Grampie's Ankle...

Just think... if we'd waited for this guy to show up, Grampie wouldn't still be limping around. Oh, the foot is much better, almost all the swelling has gone but it was obviously far from healed even with the full dose of physical therapy. So he went to another doctor, had an MRI done and got the word that the heel bone was crushed when he jumped off the ladder back in May. It just didn't show up on X-rays.

So... what next? That will be up to Joel. Seems he has a choice of doing nothing and risk bad arthritis developing or surgery which more than likely will wipe out the pain that will surely get worse if he does nothing. It would involve pins/screws and a fusion using a portion of his knee bone. It would reduce lateral flexibility, or side to side motion but not up and down movement. The kicker is that it would mean 8 weeks being completely off the foot and a total of three months to heal. Ouch! The plus side is that he could have the surgery now or two years from now, would make no difference.

Looks like he's leaning to putting it off for the time being in hopes that the arthritis won't be so bad or that a second opinion might offer different options. He's certain that it would effect his competitive swimming and that's not something he's ready to give up.

Sure was neat to see the tree climber do his thing... the view was opened up quite a bit and we're enjoying seeing more of the lake. May still take down more, just a bit at a time so we don't lose too much... but now we know what we can do and what we need to have someone else do. We're learning...