MadClouds

Broken Fibula

Sunday, March 15th, 2009 | General

Yeah, it’ true… My bone structure has been compromised.

I’m typing this from my couch which will likely be where I do a lot of things in my near future.  This is the first bone I’ve ever broken and have never realized how immobilizing it is.  Particularly immobilizing considering the break is in my right fibula.  I wouldn’t say I’m in horrible pain (thank you prescription) but find any sort of movement very uncomfortable.

So what happened?

This weekend my wife went north to visit her family and all the brother-in-law’s came down to San Diego for a weekend of paintballing. We all had some sort of new equipment which we were very egger to test out. So Saturday we talked tactical strategies on our way up to the famous Camp Pendleton Paintball Field. We found some parking in the back corner after passing 100 other parked cars containing all types of paintball enthusiasts. I’ll be the first to admit, the park was very impressive. They have eight fields covering 50 acres. We weren’t use to the sheer number of paintball participants. Our first three games were 20 vs. 20, 30 vs. 30 and 45 vs. 45 respectively. Any time during a game you’ll find at least 3 people shooting at you. I found myself going through a large amount of paint in an attempt to get every single person out. Although I wasted a lot of paint, I did manage to get 4 or 5 people out during those three games. We took a break for lunch and restocked all our gear for an afternoon of painting people.

So, the fourth game featured a field that offered an urban setting sandwiched between two hills. We started our first round and quickly advanced on the larger of the two hills. I was progressing near the front line where I suddenly felt myself get tagged with paint. I raised my gun and traversed down the steep hill. I was upset for being tagged but was proud of my aggressiveness. I waited for the round to end and gathered with my teammates on the other side.

The next round started and I found myself following my team on the adjacent hill, again assisting with the front line. I saw a good spot to bunker down and started to hurry to it. I was focused on the enemy line as I scurried down the hill to my protection. Just then my right foot sunk into a soft spot of grass and dirt. It’s planted firmly as my left foot began to lose traction on some slick grass. Now everything’s going in slow motion of course and I feel my body and foot turn in opposite directions. I knew right away that I had broken something, although at first I thought it was my ankle. I managed to transfer my momentum on the way down and found myself lying on my left hip with a bent leg and a broken bone. Right away I starting saying “I broke my leg. I broke my leg” and began getting louder to get some attention. Luckily I had a few things going for me. The boys were all within 10 feet of me. They realized something was wrong and helped shut down the game and notify the refs. Another thing was that I was wearing Noah’s Marine Core boots which provided great ankle support. The tight, shin high boot helped minimize the break. If I was in a normal tennis shoe, I can’t imagine the damage that may have happened. And lastly there was a female field medic who was on my team and came over to help right away.

At the time I felt no pain. I was pretty sure something broke but had no experiences to compare it to. With the lack of pain, I began thinking I may have just rolled my ankle. The medic began slowly moving my foot in different directions assessing my verbal reaction to each attempt. It was going pretty positive until one attempt where I could feel the two bones touch again. I stayed relaxed as they tried to cut the laces off my shoe with a knife. For some reason they weren’t able to cut the lace (either due to a really dull knife or some super strong laces). We loosened the laces and did our best to wrestle my foot free. Again the medic moved it some more as I started to notice my ankle slightly out of place. That was the point where I knew this was bad.

The refs called the base’s medical team and pulled a pickup truck outside the field where the boys carried me to. I was lying in the back of the pickup doing my best to stay calm while talking to the people around. We heard the sirens coming closer and watched as fascinated paintballers stared as they passed. The Camp Pendleton fire department arrived first and was quick to assess the situation. They asked simple questions to determine the seriousness of the injury. By the time they got the story and my personal information they were able to secure an icepack and a splint with an ace bandage. Around that time the paramedics had shown up and got filled in on the story. They got an IV going and thankfully hit me with some morphine. After a few more checks they got me onto the stretcher and took me to the Tri-City Hospital emergency room in Oceanside, CA.

While I was waiting in the ER I was given some additional morphine and tried to relax by chatting with my brother-in-law Mike, who had driven in the ambulance with me. A nurse collected my personal information and a short time after another nurse took me to get x-rayed. I was wheeled into the room in such a way that I was able to see the display monitor through a door that the nurse went into while the machine pumped radiation into me. She was kind enough to give me a lead blanket to cover my genitals. One after another she placed a black electronic board under the break, went into the room to push a button and then slid the same electronic board into the display monitor. Through some digital processing I could see her sharpen the image and crop it to size. She also labeled the views before putting another panel under my ankle. The first two shots I didn’t see anything broken at which point I was nervous of causing a big scene just over a sprain. When she put the third panel into the display monitor I could see where my fibula had separated. Roughly 2 inches about my ankle a diagonal void spanning roughly 3 inches between the bones. They wheeled me back to my waiting spot where Mike and I waited until John and Noah showed up. I explained what I saw and we chatted until the doctor came in. He explained the cast they were going to install and the steps I should take after. I needed to set up an appointment with an orthopedic doctor to discuss any possibility of surgery – although the ER doctor mentioned the bone looked like it had set itself (yay).

He prescribed some pain medication and handed me a pair of crutches. John took me home where I discovered my new best friend – my couch.

Last night I had a very tough time falling/staying asleep. Every two or three hours I found myself awakened by pain or discomfort. Jaime was nice enough to get me water and medicine twice during the night. Once morning rolled around I crutched myself back to the couch where I find myself currently.

These next few months are going to be great! *sad face*

Just for some additional sympathy I’d like to say that next weekend was the start of my flag football season. Emphases on was…

John and I had planned to try out for The Amazing Race TV show which was conducting local auditions in San Diego this morning… Yep, missed that…

Finally and most detrimental is that I had a personal goal of running the Camp Pendleton Mud Run with my coworkers at 24 Hour Fitness but have grim hopes of recovering and training enough in time for the big event.

I’m keeping my spirits high though and plan to utilize this time to get some serious web design work done on this site and others. Feel free to comment or contact me because I bet whenever you read this, I’ll be sitting on my couch

Tags: broken fibula

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