Recovery

So, I wanted to do an update on Scott's recovery.  He got out of his wheelchair at the end of December.  He started using a walker right away (I couldn't get him to go back into the chair once he was out).  It hurt my heart to see his broken legs try and hold up his body but it was a miracle as well.  I almost cried the first time he got up.  It was surprising to both of us how quickly he lost muscle mass.  After just a few weeks in bed his legs had wasted away.  You could pick them up and the skin just fell around his bones and looked so small.  For Christmas we got a pass to the rec center and we were working out several times a week.  He felt like he was making good progress and didn't need to see a therapist.  He was gaining back a lot of muscle.  But he was still walking very stiffly.  He wasn't able to lay his leg flat or bend it very much.  In February we went to California, and I told him if he wasn't able to bend his leg better he was going to a physical therapist when we got back.  So I made an appointment for him.
We also saw the doctor in March.  Dr. Barker said the bone where his femur had broken still wasn't growing and that we should start thinking about surgery as a possibility.  That was kind of depressing.  But we decided to wait until the end of the summer and try a bone stimulator for awhile.  Plus, Scott wanted to be able to golf and not be recovering from another surgery this summer.  Dr. Larsen wasn't very happy with how little his knee bent.  He told us he could do a manipulation surgery and help it get some movement back.  We said we'd consider it.  After just a couple sessions the therapist told him to go get surgery and come back.  So in April he had a same-day surgery where they put you out and just bend your leg.  Sounds easy, but it is extremely painful.  Scott said he woke up crying.  He was in a lot of pain when they let me in to see him.  So we drugged him up and brought him home.  Luckily, the pain had mostly subsided by the evening.
But then physical therapy kicked into gear and he was in constant pain from 3 sessions a week.  He was able to make great progress, though, and it was worth it. When PT ended our evenings consisted of putting weights on his knee at night and ratchet it closed afterwards along with a bone stimulator on his other leg.  He didn't get a lot of sleep for a few months.
He has been able to golf this summer but it usually wipes him out, and after pulling a muscle in his hip he has taken a break for a few weeks.  He is able to walk without a cane now but kind of ambles slowly back and forth.  He has a hard time with inclines.  He has currently been working really hard on dropping his pain meds.
I am so proud of him.  I keep forgetting that this is hard for him because he deals with everything with such a positive attitude.  Once in a great while he will have a breakdown and confess that it has been difficult, that he falls over at work sometimes and it's so embarrassing, that he hurts so much all the time.  He rarely complains and tries so hard to act like it's no big deal.  We originally thought life would be back to normal a year after the accident.  But it will probably be closer to a year and a half to 2 years.  I still feel so lucky that he gets to get back to normal at all.  I have grown to love him so much more through this experience.  I am in awe of the man I married.

Alright, I just flipped through and realized we hadn't posted any gory pictures of Scott's injuries.  So here are some of the recovering pics we took of his leg (close your eyes if you're squeamish!).  The first is his broken femur stitches.  All the pics after that are of his leg that went through the handle bar of his scooter and how it looked through the stages.  We need to get a current one. It's amazing what the body can do.