Anyone ready for some good news?

Today the orthopedist x-rayed my wrists and pelvis and I had a chance to sit down with him and examine the results. My left wrist was fractured, but it was the type of fracture you might expect to see from a minorly stupid activity gone wrong. (Coming from the guy that somehow managed to fall off a cliff.) The radiograph showed it is healing nicely and there should not be any long-term side effects. As of this moment I no longer have a cast on my left arm...yay!

Anyone ever seen a cast cutter? The PA approached me with what looked like a small skillsaw and I started thinking "you've got to be kidding me!" He started approaching my cast with it and right before I jumped out of my chair to run for my life he demonstrated that the blade would cut a cast but you could stick your finger in it and it does not cut skin. I felt a little better about the situation after that.

My right wrist is a piece a work. It is fractured in multiple places and there are screws, pins and plates holding it in place. The joint space is not great so there will be some long-term loss in flexibility and the possibility for arthritis later in life, which is common with any injury of this type. So back to the good news, they removed the external fixator today...double yay! This is gross, but they first remove the stabilizing bar from the posts, then they remove the posts from the body. The posts are literally screwed into bone, so watching the PA slowly back them out was not an experience I want to repeat anytime soon. I kid you not and have my dad as my witness, the PA had momentarily considered removing the posts with vice-grips as he could not find the correct tool in his office. He let out a big sigh and asked "do you mind if I run down to surgery and locate the right tool for the job? It might take me 10 minutes or so since they have to be sanitized." My response? "Please." LOL. My right wrist is simply in a splint now, not even a cast! I haven't really tried hard to move my wrist yet, I am waiting for some of the pain to subside. Unlike my left wrist, there will be rehabilitation required before I am able to do much of anything with it. But aside from some loss in mobility, this wrist will be back in working condition relatively soon. It feels incredible to have both casts removed!



Much like the right wrist, the pelvis is a piece of work too. You've seen the radiographs (posted below), but it is healing nicely. As of today I can start to bear weight on that leg. Bone-wise, things are healing nicely and faster than normal, so things are going really well in that department. The rehabilitation on the fractures will go relatively quickly, the nerve issues will take substantially more time.

Until today I had no idea where I stood recovery-wise. All things considered, my recovery is moving along pretty well. I expect that in the next 4-5 days that the wrist pain will subside and I can stop taking that nasty morphine and a host of other pill-based pain killers. Unfortunately the nerve pain is still higher than I like, so the nerve-related doses are going up, but those meds are tame compared to what I have been taking. When the wrist heals a little more I can start using crutches rather a walker and a wheelchair. When the nerve pain subsides and I become more mobile I can start thinking about going back to work...may this serve as adequate notice to my co-workers that, like it or not, I am coming back at some point!

No magic pill, I am told

Today did not go exactly as I had hoped. I was hoping to hear something along the lines of "you banged yourself up pretty good but will be back at it in a month or two." Instead I apparently have some decent nerve damage. For now that means a good amount of nerve pain in my right leg and the inability to do certain things with that leg. Running is definately not in the cards for a while and even walking is going to require a little time and physical therapy. The good news is there is lots of room for improvement, so the more exercise I do the quicker rehab will go. You can bet I am right on top of that. I am actually really enjoying my physical therapy appointments at Kaiser. I have a trainer that works side-by-side with me each visit doing different routines. The clientele there is probably the opposite of what you would find at 24Hour Fitness and I think a 75-year old woman winked at me today, but it's all good.

I have more appointments tomorrow with the orthopedists. They plan to take yet more radiographs to determine how the bones are healing. I may end up with the world's most photographed body with the possible exceptions of Gisele, Alyssa and Heidi Klum.

Feelin' the pain

Since my last update the doctors have scanned my body six ways to Sunday. I’ve had xrays, CT scans, CAT scans and MRIs, which might explain why I have had a minimum of one or two doctors appointments a day. The good news is they have not found anything bad. No additional broken or fractured bones, no soft tissue damage or head or neck trama (which is what they started to suspect based on the nature of my fall), and no tape worms, aliens in my stomach and I am not pregnant. The bad part is I am in pain, lots of pain. Enough so that I have come close to admitting myself to the ER a couple of times in the past two days. I am already medicated more than I would like to be but the doctors keep upping the doses in hopes it will help me manage the pain. I have an important couple of days ahead of me...more physical therapy and more doctors appointments. I should know soon what my actual recovery time is going to look like as they are re-radiographing my wrists and pelvis to determine how the bones are healing. I might even lose one of my casts! The neurologist appointment should give me a better idea where I stand on the foot (peroneal nerve) recovery. This nerve is producing a sharp pain in my leg and foot and it is definately my biggest source of pain. The doctors say some nerve pain is good, a sign that the nerve is trying to recovery. If some nerve pain is good, a ton of it is better, right? Wish me luck the next couple of days, or if you’re so-inclined a prayer or two wouldn't hurt!

How it Stands

If you’re looking for some fun ‘light’ reading, you may want to look elsewhere. Today I decided to write about some of my injuries and where I stand in the recovery process. Like it or not, here it is:

Left wrist – minor fracture, currently in a cast. I will have radiographs taken late this month and if they look favorable they will remove the cast and hopefully everything will be back to normal here.

Right wrist – heavily fractured and in a cast with an external fixator. Doctor says I fractured this one about as bad as you can fracture a wrist and still be able to put it back together. Sweet. I know far less about the exact procedure that was done, but for those smarter than me it is called bilateral open reduction internal fixation surgery. What I do know is there are incisions at the wrist on the outside of the hand and on the inside inline with the arm. There are internal screws and/or plates, I will find out more when I speak to my orthopedist. This setup has been a constant source of pain. I take as few pain meds as possible, but I have to stay on a constant dose of pill-based Morphine or the pain levels will go higher than I can tolerate. I also have to take an occasional Hydromorphone (Dilaudid) or Hydrocodone (Norco), both addictive narcotics, to keep the pain in check. I can’t wait to get off these drugs because they intimidate the heck out of me. Radiographs will be taken late this month to determine how the wrist is healing. There is a possibility that the external fixator can be removed at this appointment and the right wrist will be put in a cast similar to that on the left wrist now. That cast will likely remain in place for an additional six weeks and then rehabilitation will be required. I have lost a ton of muscle mass in this arm, so it appears I will be arm curling 25 pounds on the left and a sack of airline peanuts on the right. Oh well, I can handle the recovery and rehabilitation time as long as things heal normally.

Pelvis – I literally broke the iliac crest off the pelvis. The orthopedist says this is a rare bone to break as it is one of the strongest bones in the body. According to statements by my rescuers, I fell 50 feet with the last 10 feet being vertical and landed on a rock outcropping on my right side. A few feet to the left or right and I would have missed the outcropping and would have fallen an additional 150 feet to the river. I care not to think about that and I am very thankful I was being looked after. Luckily the pelvis broke above the acetabulum (ball and socket joint)—the rehabilitation time would have been far greater. There are a host of screws and pins holding my pelvis in place, as evidenced in this radiograph.



My left leg is fully weight-bearing, my right leg is currently not bearing at all. Radiographs taken at the end of the month will determine how well it is healing and when I can begin to put weight on the right leg. Surprisingly the pain here is manageable and hurts far less than my right wrist.

Cheekbones – fractured the cheekbones on the right side of my face. All I know is the orthopedist replaced the broken bones with titanium rods. The entire surgery was done inside my mouth, therefore there are no external incisions or scars…amazing. My face is still slightly swollen, but not really noticeable at this point and each day the swelling goes down and nearly all of the sensation in the cheek is back now.

Peroneal nerve – this provides movement and sensation to the lower leg and foot. This nerve was damaged in the fall and as a result there is a constant sharp pain in my right leg that can be felt from the knee down to the toes along the exact path of the nerve. The right foot is swollen (not bruised) and the foot cannot be lifted above the 90-degree position. They often refer to this as drop-foot, although I can control the foot at the bottom of its travel. According to the physical therapist, the nerve is not dead, when I attempt to lift my foot beyond 90-degrees the nerve responds and the muscles visibly lift in the foot, but they are not strong enough to lift the foot as far as it should. Obviously it would be difficult to drive a car or even walk normally with this condition. I was referred to a neurologist and will have a nerve conduction test done at the end of the month. I have had one before—they pass between 1 and 100 milliamps through the nerve and can determine the extent of nerve damage and based on where the electricity slows down, where the injury has occurred. This test is key—let’s hope the nerve damage is slight and a non-surgical physical therapy approach remedies the problem. The fact that this sharp pain showed up 2.5 weeks after the accident is apparently indication that the nerve is trying to heal. This pain is relatively constant and extremely painful. It has taken a lot out of me and I am hoping that a new drug prescription they recently gave me will reduce the pain somewhat.

Some of this sounds pretty bad but considering what happened it could have been far worse. I will know far more at the end of the month. Thanks to everyone for your words of encouragement. I look forward to getting my active lifestyle back!

More randomness

When you can’t go outside and do something active, you turn to the TV or the internet for entertainment. It gets a little more complicated when you don’t have cable TV. It goes to situation critical when you have no cable TV and your internet router dies. After six days without, I threatened my family to move back home if a shiny new router didn’t show up at the house soon. (I’m not sure why they didn’t take me up on the offer.) Is there anything more frustrating than diagnosing wireless internet problems and dealing with AT&T as a service provider? Three weeks ago I didn’t have a six hour hole on my calendar for this nonsense. Now I have nothing but huge gaping holes in my schedule, although the 3-4 doctors appointments I have each week are making my 86 year old grandparents feel like infrequent visitors.

With all of my free time I am pioneering a new weight loss program. Without giving it all away before I get it patented, it goes somewhat like this—start by getting hurt. Now spend some time in the hospital, the combination of that hospital smell, hearing your fellow ICU patrons down the hall screaming in agony and the seemingly endless cycle of taking vitamins and shots will greatly reduce your appetite and food cravings. When it is time to eat you will be presented with a luke-warm, TV dinner-like tray that is so disgusting that you won’t mind the fact that the portion size is one-third of what you would normally eat. Remember the 2-3 really difficult workouts you did at the gym every week and all of those training miles you did on your bike to get in shape for a summer of riding? Well, you’ll lose all of that pesky muscle weight in three short weeks with absolutely no effort required! All kidding aside, I stepped on the scale today at the doctor's and it revealed that I have lost 18 pounds. I didn’t know I had 18 pounds to lose, and that’s with all of the weight of my casts and new hardware. Don’t worry though, my appetite is back and I am now adhering to a strict twice-a-day Rocky Road ice cream regimen. By the time this is all over I will likely have un-done the past 5-years of work at the gym and my eating habits will cause me to gain 50 pounds. Maybe then people will begin to recognize me as the state worker that I am.

I truly am amazed at how quickly you lose muscle mass from inactivity. I can’t wait to get back to the gym and get back on the bike saddle again. In the meantime I’ll sit inside where it’s 73 degrees hunting and pecking this blog out and watching mountain bike videos on my laptop. It sure is less work and has given me the opportunity to discover the “Moose Tracks” flavor ice cream that very well may beat-out my lifetime favorite, Rocky Road.

Living with "Ma"

Imagine being 35 years old and going back home to live with your mother. For some reason moms think it’s their job to call you by your full first name followed by your middle name. The thought of house rules, curfews and chores all come to mind. Well, let me just say that this 35 year old is ready to move back home permanently. Mom wakes me up every morning asking me what I want for breakfast. Not “how much milk do you like in your cereal’” but more along the lines of “how do you like your eggs?” Same goes for lunch, and she has lived with me long enough to know that this stomach is hungry at 11:30 and then it’s time to feed the beast. Then there are those wonderful home-cooked dinners that moms can only seem to pull off just right. At this point, she can call me Kenneth William all she likes.

We just celebrated my mom’s 60th birthday. She certainly doesn’t look or act her age and I am happy to report that she retired earlier this year. I love seeing family meet their lifelong goals, although I seriously question that this is how she really wanted to spend the first few months of her retirement. I’m just incredibly lucky this accident happened when it did and she’s around to help me like she has. Thanks mom!

We were watching the movie “Wedding Crashers” the other day and couldn’t stop laughing at the Will Ferrell ‘meatloaf’ scene. I wouldn’t recommend acting out this scene at home with your mom. There is some fowl language at the end of the clip, which you might expect from Will Ferrell.

News from the doctor

Things that might happen at the end of the month that would make me happy:

• The left wrist may be healed enough to remove the cast.
• Right wrist will hopefully have progressed enough to remove the external fixator that is causing me so much pain. At this point the wrist and arm would be put in a cast for approximately another six weeks.
• Pelvis will be examined by xray to determine if it’s healing enough to begin bearing weight. There are some other things that need to happen before I can walk, more on that later.

I have had in-home physical therapy the past couple of weeks and the physical therapist (pt) is impressed enough with how far I have progressed that I will soon begin outpatient physical therapy. I feel very fortunate to be in good shape because it’s helping my recovery immensely. Outpatient PT’s won’t come to the house, so I will have to find a way to make it out to Kaiser twice a week. That will be a challenge, especially considering I probably won’t be able to drive for at least another month. There are tools available in outpatient PT that should help me recover quicker, which includes a machine that sends electrical impulses to the nerves to stimulate movement and recovery. So here’s the bad news, the nerve that allows me to lift my right foot and toes off the ground is mad at me. The best way to describe it would be to say I could step on the accelerator pedal just fine but I would have trouble lifting my foot off the accelerator. This could be detrimental to my driving record and my health, not to mention I would experience “drop foot” when walking. To be clear, the nerve is not dead, it does respond and my foot will lift off the floor a bit, just not nearly to the extent it should and it’s really weak. The top of the foot is pretty swollen, so we’re hoping once the swelling goes down that the nerve will respond a little better. Regardless, this is where the PT is focused right now and I’m hoping and praying for the best.

state furloughs

Seriously, another one? Nearly all of the benefits that brought me to state service are now gone. I accepted a reduced salary to have job security. Part of job security is getting a consistent paycheck. The only thing consistent is my salary drops every month or two. Now the governor is backed by lawsuits that allow him to furlough state employees at will. A third furlough day (per month) just went into effect and I am already hearing talk of a fourth. Similarly I will now receive minimum wage for 2 to 3 months each year when no state budget is in place. So what benefit am I getting from my government job? I do enjoy my job and the people I work with, but a liveable salary is important too.

My biggest beef is actually not related to the furloughs. Imagine doing the same job as the guy next to you and getting paid 38% less to do that job. Our office is almost evenly divided between scientists and engineers that do such similar work that job announcements indicate either discipline may apply for the position. Because the engineer’s union did a better job of negotiating salary and benefits, they received 38% in raises the scientists never received. To go even further, many engineering staff members make 33% more than the scientist supervising them. The scientists won a lawsuit that found this situation illegal, but with a record state budget crisis, it’s comparable to suing a street corner bum—you may win but there won’t be any money to back the lawsuit. So take the 38% salary I’m entitled to, add back in the 15% I’ve lost in the past few months through furloughs, and we’re talking about missing out on the equivalent of a large mortgage and a new BMW car payment every month. Bummer.

I am on disability leave now. For every month I take off work, I use two weeks of my leave time. The way I see it, the 50% break I’m getting on my leave time is matched by the 53% of the salary being taken from me, so disability is actually leveling the playing field for me for the first time in over three years. I always like to look at the bright side of things. I had to dig pretty deep to find a bright side here, but I managed!

Physical Therapy

Kaiser is sending a Physical Therapist over to the house twice a week to work with Ken. During her first visit the Physical Therapist did a house assessment to make sure the house is safe. Subsequent visits have focused on things like getting in and out of the car so we can get him to his appointments and leg strengthening exercises. Ken’s left leg is fully weight-bearing while his right is still non weight-bearing due to the pelvic surgery. The exercises are designed to strengthen nerve response and the muscles responsible for lifting the right foot off the ground. We are hoping by the time that the right leg is ready to bear the weight, the nerve and muscles in the foot will be strong enough for him to walk.

Ken is working hard so in the future he has the ability to use his friend Matt’s car; this is no ordinary car---it is a 1973 Chrysler Satellite Sebring. Ken is unable to drive his own car as it is a stick shift. The Satellite Sebring is an automatic and he will look good in it, accompanied by his wheelchair and walker.

The cost of flying first class

Received a nice little letter from CalStar Helicopter Services today:

...along with a small bill for their services:

Did you notice the $23,540 for the first mile of the flight...ouch.

In the Slow Lane

Ken started his day much like any other work day. However, instead of being ready to go to work at 6:45 am, he was showered, shaved, and dressed at noon. Apparently it takes a bit longer to get ready when both arms are broken and you only have one working leg. In all seriousness, Ken is very glad to be out of the hospital and is enjoying Mom's home cooked meals. His favorite thing is not being woken up by the stab of a needle. Ken was able to spend most of the day out of bed, sitting either in his chair or on the couch watching movies that Mike and Marin dropped off.

Ken wants to extend another thank you to all those who made his hospital stay more pleasant through your visits, blog comments, phone calls, cards, etc. A special thanks to Ken's co-workers who sent the cards and gift certificates. They will be used!

Ken's Quotes of the Day (All referring to his Walker training on Wednesday)

"I got passed in the hallway by a 90 year old. I thought she was going to road rage on me."

"They taught me how to parallel park and back-up."

"I did a hot lap down to the corner and back in that thing."

"You too can have one when your 90."