Thanks for all the good wishes , guys .
As Mark said I was on the old 250 Husky for its first shake down ride of the year . Had made a few changes and just wanted to test them out . Was going through a little dog-leg from one turn to the next , the rear skipped out a tiny bit , just enough to allow the toe of my boot to catch on a rut ( think my foot was on the peg but it might have been in front of it .) This has happened to all of us many times I'm sure . It hurt but I didn't crash and thought it had only taken a " pop " . Went into the next turn and tried to hit the rear brake but missed the pedal .When I looked down I realized why : foot was pointing off at a 45 degree angle . Rode back to the trailer , got off the bike, and even put a little weight on the foot but knew it was bad . Funny but the pain ( at least at that time) wasn't all that much . Thought maybe it was just dislocated .At the hospital the Xrays showed the ankle dislocated , tib and fib fractured and subluxed ( ? whatever that is ) in four places . They tried to reset it a couple times ( without pain meds - WOW! ) but it wasn't happening . An orthopedic surgeon came in to do surgery right away due to my diabetes . It was supposed to take about an hour but it took him two . He said it was a very complicated surgery and I now have a crapload of hardware in there . Said that he put a plate and screws on one of the fractures but when he stressed the bone to test it , the fracture shot farther up the bone and then spread to the sides so he had to install another , larger plate .
I am in a real battle to recover now and am not ashamed to say I'm a bit scared . My diabetes causes many complications with healing . The trauma has caused my sugars to go skyhigh. The meds I'm on for pain cause some liver problems which also affects the sugar . This is bad enough for the breaks to heal but what has me so concerned is my vision . I have diabetic retinopathy ( basically the blood vessels in your retina start leaking into the vitreous of the eye and can cause blindness ) which first developed from complications of breaking my other ankle ( even worse ) about ten years ago . They have shot lasers into each of my eyes over 2,000 times ( yes 2,000 ) during the past few years to stop progression of the retinopathy by sealing off the leaky vessels . This has already cost me a lot of vision quality . I'm praying that I don't lose any more or have liver/kidney damage .
This is a life altering injury for me . Hopefully my recovery will be complete and fast . No matter how it turns out I have decided that I just can't afford the risk of riding anymore . We all know that it is in our blood no matter what our skills or accomplishments . I had quit for over 20 years because of injuries . New technology of medicine and protective equipment allowed me to come back . The other ankle injury caused me to give up modern bikes and stick to " safer " vintage riding . I hope to stay involved in the sport in some way but do not know what that will be yet . Halffast was never really more than Quarterfast anyway , but now will have to be Nofast .
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