Snowboarding Injuries - Snowboarder's Ankle

arghhh.... I just had what i thought was a sprained ankle confirmed as a talus fracture. This happened 8 months ago. Dont know how things may have been different if I had this picked up sooner...but right now my options are 1.) surgery which has a 70% success rate and 6 month recovery time (also takes 6 months to determine if it was successful) and 2.) wear a proper brace for two months, see how that works and then get the surgery if it doesn''t.

Just got back from a weeks boarding and hurt my ankle when I was out there second day.

Was doing a switchback on the toe edge in flat light and dropped off a small unseen ledge mid carve, landed and held the toe edge. Foot seemed to stop moving when it got to the end of it''s range of motion as explained above. Ankle felt sprained all week on the outside and the next day the inside edge felt like it had massive bruising and is still sore now (7 days later), No visual bruising though and I don''t remember hitting the inside of my ankle on anything. Sprain sensation seems to be receding. Is a trip to the Docs in order do you think? or does the bruising sensation only happen on the outside?

I shattered my Talus to bits in Whistler park last March landing flat on a ice-hard packed jump. There were peices of my talus towards my toes under the skin, it was a mess. They did surgery the next day, and I was lucky to have 1 or 3 foot and ankle specialists in western Canada and he said it was like winning the lottery having him do the surgery, he was at that hospital on call. He put like 8 pins and a little plate in my ankle to peice it back together, then told me what I needed to do to recover, and I listened. Having a good surgeon is the most important thing for you to recover from this injury and require surgery, so don''t just take the first doctor you can get, ask for a foot and ankle specialist!!! My doctor did say i may not be able to walk properly again, but I think it''s their job to tell you worst case scenario so you actually take the time and not rush back on to your foot. I took 3 months off work, did not weight bare for about 3 months, then went to physio and got back to work after 4 months. My job is a desk job so that''s why I went back, but if you have to be on your feet all day, take 6 months off. Do what the doctor says, lay on your couch with your foot elevated on pillows, don''t even try to weight bare for the first 3 months. Take multivitains, drink milk, don''t get drunk for a while or be in busy crowds where you could risk twisting your foot in the beginning stages of recovery. I was told I healed suprisingly fast and age helped (26 yrs old). I''m going to try and snowboard this year, but just take it easy, no big jumps. I hiked on it after 6 months, it felt great and my range of motion was a lot better after the hike. Physio is important too, do lots, see if your work pays for it, try and go twice a week and do all your excersises they tell you to do at home. I can''t run on it, jump or do lots of my favorite sports right now, which is a huge bummer, but at least i can snowboard, and maybe after a year or 2 i''ll be playing hockey, going for jogs, playing soccer. So tak ethings slow, it''s depressing but but you''ll get through it. Make sure you have THE BEST doctor/surgeon and a good physiotherapist, if you don''t think your physiotherapist is helping, try someone else and see how you are after a session with them. Do your physio homework, don''t try to test it out and weight bare right away. I''m on month 7, and it only hurts slightly when i point my toes up as far as they can go. i can rotate my ankle around fine, just like my good foot, but it''s a little tender when the foots flexed out as far as it can go. I may have to get some pins removed, and heard the recovery time is not too bad for that, and that''s only if my bones don''t feel like they need the pins and they start to push them out. I know when I get older it''s going to really bug me, but for now all I can do is work on being healthy, do lots of cycling/physio and work on flexability. Hopefully there will be some great meds invented for arthritus for all my injuries by the time I get old!

Date of fracture: Feb 28, 2011 (snowboarding)
Commuted fracture of the talar neck, 2 permanent screws were placed. 10 weeks of non-weight bearing to allow the bone to heal. Once I was able to apply 25%... 50% weight while still in the boot and still on crutches, the pain was intense. 5 months in (with a lot of PT) I was able to test myself out with some very short, very slow, very conservative jogs. By 6 months in I was able to do about 6 mile runs. If anything, the running and activity has kept the joint loose and mobile. It is when I take a few days/week off that the thing locks back up and hurts like hell. Then I have to gut it out for the first 1/2 mile before things loosen up again.
At 9 months in, I did a 24 mile backcountry trail run through Zion National Park and felt great. The next day all I felt was muscle soreness and no material inflammation of the joint. Even got out and played golf that next day. I felt like I was "back" and it felt great. However, 3 weeks later, I went out for my first day of snowboarding since the fracture. I spent a half day on cruisers, no jumps, no moguls, nothing crazy. By the end of the day I was in bad shape. All of my slow ramping up to running shape had only enhanced a very linear forward motion and had not prepared the joint for the lateral forces and pulling in the binding. I took two weeks completely off based on the bio-feedback. I have been back running again up to 5 miles, but it feels beat up like it did 4 months ago when I first started running post fracture. I have since purchased a wobble board to get more serious about the PT exercises. As deflated as I feel now, I have to remind myself that I basically ran a marathon on rough trails after the fracture and felt great. I still have a lot of work to do to get the joint back into boarding shape, but it is possible.
The advise I am about to give will probably make every PT and Dr. out there shudder in their malpractice policies, but it is this:
While you should not push yourself to the point where you do damage (like I did snowboarding post fracture), you should push yourself to your current honest limit. If you don''t bump into your threshold, your threshold will never move. Think of your strength training like your stretching, if you can''t feel it, you can''t expect results