As a 23 (now 24) year old female, I live a pretty normal life and have been very fortunate thus far to have never sustained a serious injury (broken arm when I was 10 doesn't count) or undergo a surgery for something other than my wisdom teeth. When I heard the doctor tell me that I needed surgery on my left foot and would be non weight bearing for about three months, I lost it.
Here is a first hand account of how I suffered the dreaded "lisfranc injury".....
January 29, 2011
Jackie, Samantha, and I took a trip to NYC from Boston to celebrate David's 25th birthday in style. We had a classy hotel room, fancy outfits, and were ready to paint the town. After a night filled with dancing and drinks, the party relocated back to the hotel room for some late night snacks and an epic dance battle. The song choice of night was "Teach Me How to Dougie" and for those of you who are not fortunate enough to know the song/dance moves that go along with it, I would equate it to a 'modern day Electric Slide.' See the YouTube video for a visual aid: Teach Me How to Dougie
January 30, 2011
David and I were "dougie-ing" and I guess he needs to take lessons, because he fell, hard, with all of his weight, flat on my foot. The pain was instantaneous, I felt something pop, it swelled up and started turning blue/purple, and I couldn't put any weight on it. My best friend Jackie, the sprained ankle guru, wanted me to keep it elevated, but I opted to just douse it in cold water from the highend bathtub.
The next morning was a painful one, with both a hangover and a foot swollen beyond belief. After ice and ibuprofen, the pain hadn't subsided but I put on a poker face (or so I'd like to think) and trekked the five blocks on foot from the hotel to Port Authority to hop on a bus back to Boston. With a lot of time to think about the pain on the busride home and work pending the next morning, I started to wonder how I could possibly take the red line train from Braintree to Charles/MGH and then walk to my office at MGH (yes, luckily I work at a hospital!). I figured if I iced it, took some ibuprofren, and slept it off the pain would subside enough to get to work.
January 31, 2011
Ha. Fail. The pain did not subside, it got worse. I went to work anyways and showed my dance battle wounds to some colleagues. The bruising and swelling were enough for them to persuade me to go to the Urgent Care Clinic at the hospital. My friend, Charlotte, escorted me over to the building and the nurse at the UCC checked my foot by pressing on certain areas - since the pain wasn't too bad, I was given a small shoe/boot to walk in and went down to have x-rays taken just to be sure nothing was broken.
The nurse followed up with me later that afternoon and told me I had a non-displaced fracture of the fourth metatarsal and another fracture in some other part of my foot. They wanted to send me to a specialist to ensure I didn't have this really rare injury she referred to as a lisfranc fracture, but no more detail was shared at the time. So, I continued to laugh off the injury and make jokes about it. I mean honestly, what are the chances that someone is having a dance battle (why was a dance battle even necessary?), the other person lands on their foot (can't dance well/needs to learn how to Dougie better?), and they end up with a fracture (bad luck...)? It's such a freak accident ---- it's funny. Don't forget to play "Teach me How to Dougie" while you're reading this, it definitely adds to the humor.
February 1, 2011
My first appointment with ortho......
Dr. Kwon had me take weight bearing x-rays (ouch) since that is the only definitive way to get an answer as to whether it is/is not a lisfranc injury. I had been laughing about the injury for a few days now and started to tell the story to Dr. Kwon while he pulled up the x-rays on the computer. His first statement after looking at the images was "this is serious" and his second was "it is a lisfranc injury and you will need surgery". Well, that about did it for me - I went from joking around about a small fracture to crying in the exam room because I needed surgery (anxiety, fear of the unknown...). I also felt like a jerk for laughing about something that was obviously so serious - hopefully I didn't offend the doctor :)
Dr. Kwon sent in one of his assistants who talked to me for a few minutes to calm me down. When I stopped crying, he came back in and explained what the injury actually is - he started talking about the history of the injury and this was in fact one of the only things I remembered after my appointment. Useless, yet interesting information. The injury is named after a field surgeon, Jacques Lisfranc de Saint-Martin, in Napoleon's army. It was a common injury for cavalry when they fell off their horse and their foot would get caught in the stirrup causing a twisting motion, thus injuring the joint now more commonly known as the lisfranc joint. I digress, but the takeaways from this interaction were that 1. I needed surgery where screws and pins would be inserted in my foot to put it back together and 2. I would be non weight bearing for an extended period of time (close to three months). Ahhhhhhhhh......
In shock, I left the office with my packet of preop instructions and was instructed to wait for a phone call to schedule surgery. This funny freak accident just wasn't so funny anymore.
In future postings, I plan to talk about my experience with an extended non weight bearing injury and how I manage to get around. I found that with this injury, there was very little out there for information and a lot of blogs that talked about how horrible other people's experiences have been while recovering from this. Hopefully someone else who suffers from this injury can find something useful in this blog.
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