Broken Ankle at 1 year

Steep hill challenges ankle dorsiflexion (Spencer Meadows hike a week ago)

One year ago I slipped on carpeted stairs in our house, my left ankle took the force of the fall on a tile floor, and that began my recovery from displaced trimalleolar fracture. I got a lot of help and support from my wife and daughter during this injury recovery. It was a struggle and took a lot of persistence and patience to recover to where I am now. I can go for long walks, hike up and down steep hills, and am starting to test out running.

Improvements

• Dorsiflexion is improving. I can now get knee to wall with my toes 2 inches from the wall. It took about 6 months to get there. My healthy ankle can dorsiflex, knee to wall, with toes 5–6 inches from the wall.
• Top of ankle aches less with walking up steep hills and doing impact exercises.
• I can do a one leg squat and hop on one leg!
• I can walk longer distances without ankle swelling (and run 1–2blocks before it hurts)
• My left calf is now only 1/2 inch smaller than right calf. It increased by 1/2 inch in one month.
• Toenails are much better after a fabulous doctor shaved/ground down the extra growth and gave me some advice to help them grow back more normally. He suggested I stop wearing compression socks unless needed since the compression socks can irritate and damage toenails.
• My tattoo with the date of injury is fading.

Still struggling with

• Getting full dorsiflexion back:
  - I can hike up a steep hill but not without my ankle complaining and straining with the dorsiflexion.
  - I can do a one leg squat but not very deep because of dorsiflexion limit.
  - With increased dorsiflexion I feel stinging ache across top of ankle and along lateral and medial malleolus (where there is metal).
• Ladder drills and high impact exercises irritate the fibula where there’s a metal plate and irritate tibia where there are screws:
  - After 10 minutes the fibula lateral malleolus feels sore and painful to touch (where there is hardware) and the skin, over fibula, feels like it is being scratched on the inside.
  - After 20 minutes of high impact exercises the medial malleolus (where there is hardware) feels achy.
  - Running more than 1–2 blocks without ache. I think I’m just going to push through the ache and see what happens.
• Weight on fibula makes it ache. For example, sitting with legs crisscrossed and weight on left leg, or doing reclined pigeon pose and trying to figure out where to set my left leg (without irritating fibula), or sleeping on my left side. I’d like to be able to do that without achiness.
• Increasing left calf muscle so it is the same size as the right calf. At current rate I hope to be there within 1–2 months.
• Increasing left side strength and focusing on more one leg exercises on left.
• Cold feeling in ankle particularly after lunges, squats, dorsiflexion stretching, and high impact exercises. Nobody I have mentioned this to knows what causes this. The internet search result that makes the most sense is nerve damage since the cold feeling is happening less and less.

What’s next

• I have a one year appointment with surgeon in a week where I’ll get another ankle xray and am planning to talk about hardware removal (plate and screws on fibula, 2 screws in tibia). Physical therapist, and massage therapist I see for scar tissue massage, both believe removing the metal could help relieve irritation/aches and improve dorsiflexion.
• Pausing on PT for now. I have one more PT appointment and then I’m going to stop going to PT, work on progressing on my own, and go back to PT when/if hardware removal happens.
• Hoping I can wear more shoes and boots later this year. A lot of my shoes and boots hit the fibula metal.