BreakMyLeg

BreakMyLeg My personal Osteotomy blog about how a very nice guy plans to break my leg, reset it by giving it and then holding it in place with a bit of heavy metal.

My backside was sore from sitting on an NHS chair for the last 90 minutes waiting to see a man to hear what I was convinced was going to be bad news. I badly needed the loo but didn’t want to wander off as I knew my name would be called out and being “unavailable” my appointment would be lost, things like that happens to me all far too often. So I just sat there getting even more depressed by the

minute. By god I hate hospitals. I thought to myself that this was the end of a long and tiring struggle to find a way to walk without either pain, especially pain, or a waddle that made me look from a distance a lot like an oversized penguin. My name was called and I stood up and slowly moved across the reception suite (really just a bunch of chairs in a large alcove) to a tiny little room where I proceeded to explain the last 4 years of operations, procedures and how proud I was of my extensive rubber band collection gathered from the many well meaning physio’s who have all wasted their time with me. Some time later I left the room with a rather stunned look on my face. I went in with no hope and left with more than I have ever had in years. OK, so he was going to break my knee with a saw, take out a chunk of it, twiddle with a lump of it and fix it back in place with enough screws to erect an IKEA wardrobe. This I had to write about…so here it is. Stay tuned for more.

14/03/2026

Big week next week. Could be more operations.

An offloading leg brace offers no support, it bends your whole leg in the opposite (often painfully so) direction to how...
09/09/2024

An offloading leg brace offers no support, it bends your whole leg in the opposite (often painfully so) direction to how your leg naturally wants to bend. It is a medieval torture device masquerading as a ‘medical aid’.

Earlier today I was in a webinar with Paralympic javelin thrower Shelley Holryd. It made me also recall attending a talk some years ago by a local Paralympian, Josef Graig MBE, who gave without a shadow of a doubt the greatest speech at an event I’ve ever personally heard, and I’ve heard a few in my time. Josef didn’t initially show his medal, he just talked about things in such as way as to make his condition almost seem irreverent. At the end he pulled out the massive gold medal and dangled it in front of him and the audience went wild, literally, as they were mostly my son’s final school year all of whom were very appreciative of Josef’s wisdom. I think they really related to his talk and the fact that he was only a few years older than they were made him a good fit to the audience.

Listening today to Shelley, whilst thinking back to Josef, made me understand something I’ve always known but often forget…there is always someone in deeper s**t than you are and that it all comes down to how you deal with the crap you are served. Lets call it ‘having perspective’.

PERSPECTIVE is a word it all boils down to. When you have it you understand, and when you don’t have it you can find yourself struggling with negativity, low mood and perhaps even a little anger.

Having a fashionable accessory attached to my leg that’s going to make much of my life difficult at most airports is not really a problem. All I have to do is to make light of it, and perhaps think of a few bad jokes to make us all smile should I find myself in that situation.

I have it now and that’s all there is to it.

Hello there, remember me?Well, two more years have passed.I remember very well my very last day of running, I think I al...
30/08/2024

Hello there, remember me?
Well, two more years have passed.

I remember very well my very last day of running, I think I always will. I was on my own and it was a very foggy pea soupper of a night. There was nobody out but us stupid runners and the occasional few dogs walking their owners.

It's been several years since the cluster of operations and I'm hitting a very major milestone in a couple of weeks.

I'll post something here (meaning I'll have a right old moan) when it all happens.

Let me just say my timeline has been drawn a little forward.

21/04/2022

It's been about 4 years now. Thought it time to post an update.

Knee doing as well as can be expected. Good mobility with full range of motion but very limited loading capacity.

Scarring almost all gone with just a small one at the knee.

Not doing any heavy weights but am keeping up with biking and aerobic work in the gym.

I walk with no sign of a limp.

My walking stick collection was disposed of a couple of years ago.

10/02/2019

January 14th saw me once again arguing with the anaesthetist. This time it was was over how I as going to be medicated. I was having non of this epidural s**t, give me f drugs I want out! So it was that a little later that day I woke up after being given my f@ drugs, very sore indeed but glad to finally be at the end of it all.

Extracting the metal frame and bolts was actually straight forward, quick and nowhere near as painful as having it put in in the first place 16 months earlier. The scars of other operations have been worked on and in a few months they will barely be viewable, impressive work by the surgeon. I was out soon after and stayed at home for a couple of weeks. Having returned to work too quickly last time I was not keen to repeat the mistake.

After 2 weeks of rest came 2 weeks of testing. As long as I keep within the physical limitations of my leg I can carry on as normal for around 10-15 years or so, by which time the leg will need further work.

Running friends and others around me have moved on and are now far away compared to 2013. If life is like a river then I have stood on the banks of it for too long and others are far far away from me downstream now. It’s actually scary just how much time has passed since then but I really need to learn to accept that others have their own path…to let go.

We can control almost anything but we can’t control time itself. Taking the battery out of a clock won’t stop it, nor will hiding your watch in the draw. Time is never on your side, it’s always against you. You think you have plenty of it but it always runs out on you when you need it most. You can try to master time, manage it or tie it down in some way, but time will always run out on you.

If you feel the exchange rate is good enough you can exchange some of your current time to bring back your past times and go over those old times again, but that’s not always a good investment as you give up time to simply rerun over in your mind something which can’t be altered. Thinking of the past robs you of time to enjoy new thoughts.

‘Do’ today, as tomorrow you might not be able to…

02/01/2019

Mohammed I've just send a PM about your question.

I wish I had something exciting, special or interesting to say about how I’ve been getting along since March but to be h...
01/11/2018

I wish I had something exciting, special or interesting to say about how I’ve been getting along since March but to be honest looking back all I can say is that it’s been an exercise of learning the three P’s…persistence, patience and pissed-off-ness. And before you ask yes it’s an official propa word, at least in my dictionary it is...)

The osteotomy itself saw a gap of around 12-15mm or so between the two parts of my tibial bone. This was held in place by the Tomofix plate, especially a big chunk of metal bolted on with 8 screws thingys (another official word). The last several months or so has seem me attend gym for my self-guided rehab sessions with an almost religious fervor. I carry out the exact same routine every time, I load up the leg for a set period of time to a set level of effort and then very, very, very, slowly I increase that time and effort. This all contributes towards placing managed and controlled stress on the joint which should lead to better bone growth. So far so good.

I cannot begin to tell you how mind numbingly boring, tedious and soul destroying working out at the gym is to me. I can’t stand the frigin music, the distractions and the shouting-loud-as-you-can instructors. I go there as it’s cheap, close by to home and the really big payoff is that because I go so early I can eat breakfast with unlimited coffee refills at the pub next door. That’s right I only go for the food. I buy a small vegetarian breakfast and often ask for a side order of black pudding. Anyone who knows what actually goes into black pudding will know that it is without doubt the least vegetarian food substance on the planet so at first the staff would serve the black pudding on a separate plate, perhaps thinking it was for someone else, but they soon learnt it was for me and now they just dump it on top of the food, preferably on top of the oxymoron that is a vegetarian sausage. The reason I order a vegetarian small breakfast is that it actually has fewer calories than a bowl of porridge with jam and also has very good levels of nutrition. The veggy sausage is to keep down the level of cholesterol and fat, both of which are two high. So, I’m dragged out of my bed and to the gym by food.
I have a problem with food, it won’t leave me alone unless I eat it. I blame my parents for their genetic gift of loving good food far too much for my own good, that’s my next posting soon.

Anyway…

Stuck in the gap caused by the procedure is literally a small piece of another person’s leg. I don’t know which part but I’m assuming it’s a bit of leg as I think fitting a bit of leg is easier when it’s going into another leg…I guess. I was a bit annoyed that I woke up and was told it was there as no one had actually told me, just as no one actually told me that they would also be literally stabbing the inside of my knee to force to bleed. They called it microfracture and told me it’s normal to do both at the same time. 2 for 1 day.

The purpose of the bone graft is to form a scaffold over which my own bone could form more quickly than if my bone had to span the gap on its own. It seems to have worked out well as I can no longer feel the metal plate taking any load or the screws in the bone both of which used to really freak me out in the early post-operative days. Today I feel I really can stand on my own two feet.

My time at the gym in recent months has me strengthening my leg muscles greatly and today I can walk along the street and your wouldn’t know or spot anything was wrong.

Some can live with the metal plate in there, I’m not one of them. It’s coming out at the very earliest opportunity and I can’t get it out soon enough.

WARNING - The following is my own non-professional totally unqualified biased view from my completely subjective perspective.

What the difference between fixing a broken bone and an osteotomy? I have had this question a lot given that some folk I know are wondering what causes such a long period of repair.
The answer is that typically in a normal accidentally broken bone the parts are placed back against each other and time is given for the slight gap to heal. In an osteotomy the leg is deliberately “broken” (actually cut with either a saw or chisel like blade) and deliberately held apart with a metal scaffolding bar resulting in a far longer extended period of repair.

29/10/2018

In the words of the song used in the opening scene of Star Trek Enterprise...'It's been a long time getting from there to here, but my time is finally near. And I can feel the change in the wind right now.
Nothing's in my way. And they're not gonna hold me down no more No, they're not gonna hold me down..;

Hello! It's now been over a year, to be exact it's been 13 months and 2 weeks and it's time for the metal to come out now as it's now getting in the way and making things a little sore. It restricts my rehab (which is going very well overall) as it limits the level of effort I can put into things.

I'm going for a full leg scan to let the medical types measure the angle of the bones and see if they have settled in and also to check my human bone graft (still haunts me that bone from another person is in my leg). It's not all sweetness and light but overall it's OK.

I'm going to start posting on here again to share and document the few months behind me and those coming up ahead.

Thank you so much to those who have kept in touch with PM's. Its been great to hear how your own stories are coming along.

17/03/2018

Taking a break, no pun intended, for a few months from posting. See you all when the metal comes out.

Day 182 - I think, it's been a while now.Today is the day that I was originally expected to reach full post operational ...
28/02/2018

Day 182 - I think, it's been a while now.

Today is the day that I was originally expected to reach full post operational recovery. I actually hit that mark a few weeks ago but I'm not complaining about being a little ahead of the curve.

Today I walk about almost normally. In fact if you were to be behind me as I walked you wouldn't really see anything that would indicate my condition.

It's not all sweetness and light. The change in the mechanics of my leg is now placing more load on the outer edge and what little cartridge I have left there is having to work very hard to stop my bones crashing into each other. It's doing an OK job but in truth its not as load bearing as I was hoping for and while I may look alright on the surface walking is still more uncomfortable that I was hoping.

The Patella tendon issue won't go away until I have the metal removed. In short sitting down isn't good as this is stretching the tendon across the metal so when I stand up my knee hurts a fair bit for a couple of minutes or so, it doesn't last long and I'm used to it now.

I have conquered stairs! I can now walk up a reasonable number of stairs unaided and without the need to pull myself up by the handrail like some drunken old man after a night out at the pub. I take it easy but it's another step to normality.

OK, I'm not going to be walking along the entire length of the Great Wall of China any time soon but you know my three times a week rehab at the gym is coming along. Steady work for a hour is helping to gain a sense of fitness which I have lacked for a very long time indeed, and missed greatly.

The big thing is that day to day walking about is now very normal to me. It's been along time since I used the word 'normal' to describe my walking. I'm very happy to say I no longer walk like a penguin...)

05/02/2018

Day 150 – give or take
Time gives distance and distance give perspective and perspective give me a proper view of things. At least that’s what I often tell myself.

Over the weekend I caught up with one of my favourite films About Time. It’s a film full of amazing British actors, great script writing and an interesting story line, but what I love about it is its main point that you always have to go forward. Having the ability to go back isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

I have lost count of how many times I have said to myself ‘never again’. I have lost count of the number of pills I’ve taken, painful exercises I have endured and how my life radically changed overnight taking months to back to something approaching what was my previous reality, and yet even with all of that I would still do it again.

This week I see the medics for the last time (at least for my leg) I get to hand back my walking stick which I no longer need, am selling my wheelchair which I no longer need and returning to something I do need, a normal life.

Yes my knee clicks at times and can be sore, yes I still can’t walk as fast as my wife and no I can’t run (nor will I ever be able to run if the truth be said) but you know what, it has been worth it. I can walk up stairs in a way which was painful before, stay on my feet all day and don’t take any more pills, I walk almost normally now with far less of a waddle in my waggle. That’s a result in my book.

In ten months or so all the metalwork is coming out and after a brief second period of rehab I am looking forward to whatever I have as whatever it is will be generously received.
Time travel really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, just keep going forward.

14/01/2018

Day 126.
Woke up the other day with a very strange feeling across my knee and lower thigh. I actually thought that the bolts in my leg were coming loose as I was having these weird sensation as I flexed the leg...a sensation of rubbing which caused my bone to vibrate.Odd as that sounds I really did convince myself it was happening.

I was due a visit to the physio anyway to waddled my way into an almost empty ward to be met by the single physio on duty over the holiday, I think she was relieved to have something to do.

As always I was poked and prodded, prodded and poked. I'm really used to it now but as it was so quiet I listened as she put her hand flat on my kneecap and asked me to move my leg...and there it was, a creaky-vibrating-rubbing sort of sound.

Turns our it's just the Arthritis behind my kneecap having a bad time of it and causing thing to rub. I chatted with my GP not long after on other related issues and he was happy about things. Nevertheless it was a reminder.

It was a stark reminder that this thing I've done is not a fix, merely a stop gap to extend my leg's time of usefulness, like underpinning the foundations of an old creaky house.

On the up-side...based on previous estimates I am currently around 32 days ahead of recovery plan. But in 'creaky old house' kind of way that recovery plan is simply to get me to the place I was before this all happened. Then have another 160 days to reach full post-op ability.

It's a long way to Tipperary, It's a long way to go...

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