I've seen a few lucky souls who seem to have had a pilon fracture and recovered on a "normal" broken leg timeframe - but they are the very rare exceptions. VERY rare exceptions.
That being said, some of us are still better off than others. How intact the joint remains afterwards seems to be the determining factor of "will your life go on, albeit with some (minor) limitations," or "is your life going to be changed dramatically?"
Lucky me I believe I'm part of that middle group. I will never get to "forget" about this injury, but on the other hand, *most* of my life won't be too dramatically affected at least not in the next 20-ish years barring any other complications (such as osteomyelitis flaring up).
Even so, this injury takes a long time to heal, and I mean a LONG time. When you're someone who considers herself fairly fit, pretty darn tough, and have always been a pretty good "healer" things like this can hit a bit hard. I'm 13 months past my last ORIF, and I still, daily, have to think about my leg. First in the morning, it's getting through my workout and trying to regain everything I've lost, plus get what I can out of that leg. Then at the end, it's stretching that ankle out and trying to get the flexibility back that I can. This can leave me in tears on a nearly daily basis.
Then there are the days you just simply piss it off. I did that this weekend when I wore some heels all evening to my annual awards banquet this past Saturday. I'm STILL paying for it on Monday! I managed to still get my workout in, but it's definitely still a bit cranky. And swollen.
OMG the swelling. It's this thing that just never goes away. Most days now aren't too bad, but there's still some. Every day. 395 days of swelling with no end in sight. NOT something I even remotely would have expected when all of this started.
I've got another year - another full YEAR - until I will know what my "new normal" is going to be. So, there are two ways I try to view this: 1) That I have another 335 days to get as much ROM out of this ankle as I possibly can, and 2) that there is still another year of rehab left, and don't be discouraged because it's not *there* yet...you're only half way there, sister!
That's both frustrating and encouraging. Encouraging in that "this isn't the end" but also discouraging that it's been this long and I'm only halfway done LOL.
