Surgery, plus a video.

Hello loyal ITA follower,

A lot has developed for me since my last time Blogging - October 17th. To make a long story short, the day after my blog, our doctors discovered a large cyst growing inside the calcaneus bone in my left foot. I was told that if I continued to run I’d risk the collapse of the bone and, consequently, damage to my ankle joint from such a fracture. Basically, if a collapse occurred there was a good chance that I’d never run again. Within two days I was in for an MRI and Tim was consulting with some of the best foot specialist around the country. We talked it over, decided that surgery was really my only option, and chose Dr. John Grady in Chicago – one of the best foot and ankle specialists in the nation whose office is a reasonable drive from my parents’ house in Ann Arbor, MI.

So right now I am on my parents couch with my foot elevated for 40 minutes out of every hour, but an improvement from 50 minutes an hour for the first week post-op. I’ve been watching a lot of TV to say the least. I also took apart and fixed an Xbox with the dreaded Red-Ring-Of-Death, and increased my Halo Reach time. I’ll have to send my mom to the store to pick up Black Ops soon, I’ve heard good things. My sister has been picking up all the Harry Potter movies from the library. I’ve watched the first 5 so far, and #6 is on HBO on-demand. I basically fill in the rest of my days looking at youtube videos, browsing reddit and facebook, and trying to stop my dog from barking out the windows.

Surgery was last Friday and I just saw Dr. Grady yesterday for my first checkup. Dr. Grady’s son runs for Notre Dame who took third in the team standings at the Great Lakes Regional in Rochester, MI yesterday. It looks like they’ll get one of the first at-large bids into the NCAA meet. The reason for my saying that is that Dr. Grady was kind enough to stop by my parents’ house on his way back to Chicago to check on my foot, saving us the drive there and back. The diagnosis is I can start walking a bit with a boot Monday (tomorrow) and biking with a boot for ~20mins on Friday… That means, I’ll be back in the Upper Valley in no time! I am incredibly happy with how things have progressed so far. I have to take a second to thank the doctors at the Sharon Health Clinic in Sharon, VT for discovering the “ticking time-bomb” in my foot, Dr. Grady for performing the surgery and going out of his way to check on my foot, and ITA for all the support – Tim and Amory specifically - for guiding me through the stressful process of getting surgery, which Tim is too familiar with himself, and for setting up top notch health insurance that allowed me to see one of the best foot specialists in the country.

Until next time,

Lex

Here is a video I made of my dog, Flash...