They're serviceable, but still limited in their range of motion, probably from adhesions between the thigh muscles and the large bone calluses that formed around the fracture sites, mainly the femoral ones - the lower legs were broken in more places but don't form the big calluses like the femurs do. The Stanford U. orthopedists treating me actually have a rather mixed view of putting in artificial stuff like plates and screws - they say it can be useful for short-term stabilization, but can actually interfere with the natural healing process and cause other complications down the road - so in my case it was mostly external splinting and let nature take its course. So my X-rays are uglier-looking than they might be had they used the bionic plate & screw method, but aside from aesthetics the bones have healed quite well. I'll never have sexy legs again, but given the severity of the injuries (especially to the left leg - they were real close to amputating that one, because for the first 24 hours or so they couldn't detect a pulse down in the foot area, due to the massive blood leaking into the tissues and resulting swelling and pressure, a.k.a. "compartment syndrome") I'm glad just to have legs - period. Knee joints are somewhat looser and poppy/creaky, but paradoxically, the bones shattering around them probably saved the knees from much more major damage. Gotta put 'em up a lot during the day and limit my activities somewhat, but all in all, better off than I thought I'd be during the worst of it a year ago.silkov wrote:How are the legs now?... I mashed up my foot and ankle years ago in a Motorbike crash and had to have pins and stuff put in to hold it all together!
I should add a bit about the circumstances - I said vaguely "car accident", but it wasn't anything like driving stupid or drunk, at least not on my part. No, I was out getting my evening walk in, crossing a nearby busy street, light's red, walk signal is on, and some 17-year-old kid driving daddy's SUV comes outta nowhere, blasting up the middle of 3 lanes (which happens to be clear), not seeing the red light, not seeing the stopped cars in the lanes on either side, not seeing the several cars that just turned left from the cross street (which I had to wait for before getting the walk signal) and just creams me. Bad as it was, it could've been a lot worse. And yes, my lawyer is on the case - not gonna be like the lady that spilled scalding McDonald's coffee on herself and wound up with millions (which everybody knows about and thinks is the way things always go - she actually wound up with less than a million after the judgment was appealed), but the "Vike saves for his dream house in the country" fund should be getting a nice donation sometime in the not-too-distant future.
Oh, and thanks for the kind words, Mr. Jaclem, sir. (And everybody else). Guess I'm just too ornery to go down that easy ... my relatives say I'm like a cat, already used up at least a couple lives, not sure how many more I've got left - one of these days it'll be the last one. But not today.
