The New Normal

Following a couple of really rocky days, Mark rebounded. We suspect the blood transfusion he received yesterday morning came from some super hyper cheerleader, because it put some serious pep in his step (not that he's stepping, but I digress). He had an awesome day yesterday, followed by an even better night last night, capped off by a stellar day today. That earned him a golden ticket home late this evening. We waved what we hope will be a permanent goodbye to the hospital and made our way home to begin the next phase of Mark's recovery.

We've been asked a lot of similar questions the last few days, so I'm using some more fun pictures to answer them:

The swelling has gone down a TON! The bandages surrounding his foot make it a bit hard to tell, but the foot's still a huge source of swelling. His foot is currently larger than his thigh. No joke. And when he's not in a tremendous amount of pain, I mock him for it endlessly.

They made a total of 5 new incisions during surgery, so his leg looks a bit like a bloody jigsaw puzzle. Luckily, a couple of the incisions were very small like the one you see to the left above that only required 4 staples to close it.

The hideous faciotomy will not ever be closed up. The skin graft will heal and eventually be a tad less likely to make small children cry. They did remove the staples from that incision during his surgery on Monday.

How many surgeons does it take to redress a leg? Well, 2 surgeons and a PA apparently. Because of the rareness of Mark's case, it's attracted a bit of attention at the hospital. We've had visits from  random doctors checking in on Mark to see how his healing is going.

Because they have essentially built an internal cast of rods, braces, and screws and because of the skin graft and faciotomy, they will not be putting a hard cast on his leg. This high-tech brace will remain on his leg for a few weeks/months, and then will eventually be replaced by a tall boot. The boot is not a walking cast, as he is not allowed to put any pressure whatsoever on his leg for about 3 months (he'll become fast friends with his wheelchair), but rather will act as a brace for his foot.

Because of nerve damage to the paroneal nerve associated with the break, he does not currently have the ability to hold his foot up or lift his toes back towards his face. That is obviously an essential part of walking, so if he never regains that nerve function (only time will tell if the damage is permanent), he will have to walk with a permanent brace.

Our hope is that with some extensive physical therapy (which he won't even start for another 3 months), he will make a complete recovery and only have some freaky Frankenstein scars to show for it!
We're currently trying to come up with a cooler story for how he received his scars. Shark attack is high on our list. Got any better ideas?