On February 5th, 2009 at 7:00PM, I was routinely walking my dogs after I got home from work. My wife was off that day, and waiting for me to return. It had snowed earlier that week, but all of the snow had melted, except for a small patch in front of my neighbor's house where they had a small section of sidewalk replaced the previous year. I always walk in the street with my dogs, but our female dog likes to move to the sidewalk as we approach the last house prior to ours. I almost past my neighbor's house when suddenly my feet both slipped out from under me without warning. I had slipped on a small patch of black ice; never saw it. It totally caught me off guard. Seems the small amount of snow on my neighbor's sidewalk had melted/refrozen at one end where it met the dry sidewalk. Without time to even think as I began falling, I scrambled my feet instinctively to try to catch myself, but my left foot hit a dry patch of pavement and stuck as I was falling. My foot was twisted as well at this point and there was a micro-brief moment when I knew I was not in a good falling position and this fall could end up bad.I heard and felt a loud SNAP as if went down. I immediately knew I had broken my tibia, even though I had never broken my leg before. I just knew it. The pain was immediate and brilliantly sharp, but I had enough composure to sit up and pick up my leg to try to assess the damage. At first, I picked up my leg by my lower shin where the pain was located. I felt the bone pressing on the inside of my leg and against my jeans. OK, it's probably broken, I thought. Then I grabbed my leg by the calf. When I did this, gravity turned my foot past a 90 degree angle. Yep, definitely broken. Damn! This is not good...not good at all. It looked pretty strange to see a limb bend so unnaturally like that. I tried to get up, but couldn't. So now I'm lying there thinking: what do I do now? Do I yell for help? Wait - my cell phone. So I call my wife from out front. "You better come out here, I think I jusy broke my ankle". I said ankle, but I knew it was my lower tibia. At this point I'm inching myself away from the patch of ice so she wouldn't slip, too. That's all we need - two broken legs. She can't get my up because I'm dead weight (I only weigh about 180lbs.) She rounds up a neighbor to help get me into the car and off we go to the Emergency Room. We were told we were on the "express" list of people in the ER. After a delightful 3-hour wait, I finally get into x-ray. By this time, adrenaline is out of my system, so when I'm asked to turn my leg this way and that way, the pain was quite severe. I still remember feeling the bones grinding and moving around inside my leg when I moved it. Not a pleasant experience. I remember saying to the x-ray technician that I must be losing my high pain threshold as I'm getting older. I actually had sweat beads on my forehead it hurt so bad when I moved the leg around. She said "no wonder you're in so much pain. You broke BOTH bones and the breaks are quite severe." Both breaks were spiral oblique complete fractures, which exposed large surface areas of bone. She then says "I think you're going to need surgery." Wonderful. Finally, after my wife complained, they gave me a Percocet for the pain. After three and a half hours, it did nothing at that point. They set me up in a temporary cast and sent me home.

Next morning, we amazingly are able to get in to see the Orthopaedic Surgeon, as the squeezed me in. Initially, they were leaning toward surgery, too, but then decided to give it a week to see if the bones would realign on their own. I stayed home from work that week and sat motionless on the couch. I was told that first week would determine if surgery could be avoided, but movement had to be avoided. They cast me in a full-lag cast and send me home. After one week, back to the OS. They still say no surgery, but want to see me again to be sure. At this point, I go back to work after a week of no movement. I work at a computer all day and have to keep my leg propped up to avoid extreme leg pressure/pain. OS had to cancel the following week, so the next x-ray was two weeks later. OS says the bones are aligning perfectly, so now I'm officially out of the woods regarding surgery, but it will mean an additional 2 weeks in a cast due to the initial excessive bone gaps. I'm at nearly four weeks - the halfway point as I write this. At six weeks, the full leg cast is scheduled to come off, leg gets washed up, then a half cast goes on. If all goes well, the shortie gets cut off two weeks later. That's eight weeks of pure hell in a cast, but I'm just glad I'm avoiding surgery, which the OS said would be particularly nasty.

Update to follow when the cast is switched out.