Oh….the footbone’s connected to the anklebone
The anklebone’s connected to the shinbone
The shinbone’s connected to the Elmobone
Now hear the word on The Void…

After months of zoning out at the Deadbeat Cafe, The Leg has finally decided to go back to work. IOW, it’s started to grow bone to fill in the walnut-sized void in my lower (distal) femur. The spots circled in red weren’t there at my last visit.

YAY!

It’s case of too little, too late, unfortunately; Doc says The Leg grows bone about as fast as a sloth tapdances. If I want to be walking before I turn 112, he thinks it needs a little extra motivation.

In docspeak, you spell “motivation,”  “b-o-n-e-m-a-r-r-o-w-t-r-a-n-s-p-l-a-n-t.” The Doc and his team will suck up my bone marrow, mix it with donor (i.e., dead people) bones, and jam-pack it into the hole.

The surgeons are pretty optimistic. “The fact that you’ve got growth in spots means it’s healthy bone, and that’s good,” said The Doc.

It’ll also be much less complicated than the first time around. “That was a 5.5-hour operation,” he reminded me, “This is almost-but-not-quite outpatient surgery.’

No rehab center this time; I’ll go back to Mom’s in a couple of days and life will resume as normal. Or what passes for normal here.

So…it’s all set. Late next week they pack The Leg full of marrow goo. And then we shall see.

On Friday night, Sept. 16, 2016, I fractured my left femur just above Elmo, my replacement knee. I lived in a wheelchair, facing hip-high amputation of my left leg, for about two years while I fought health care bureaucracy, cost-conscious HMOs, and myself to figure out a way to walk again. (Spoiler alert: Elmo won!)

I documented my adventures in remobilization in this blog. They’re awfully self-indulgent, occasionally icky, and probably only of interest to me, but on the off-chance that they help someone else with a catastrophic injury, I’m keeping them together here. If you don’t want to read them, that’s OK; I still love you. If you do, you might want to start from the beginning, on the archive page that lists all posts.