Tuesday, September 16, 2008

X-Rays of my left elbow - 6 months post op

six months ago yesterday I was in a horrific accident that broke both of my elbows. My right elbow suffered only a hairline fracture, but I destroyed my left elbow.

This is what my elbow looked like 2 months post-op:



This is what my left elbow looks like today:



Though I still have quite a bit of hardware in my arm, the bone has healed very well. My suppination and pronation are about equal in both arms. I still feel a bit of a stretch in my left arm when I fully suppinate it, i.e. turn it palm side up, but even that is lessening over time.

I am grateful to a very skilled orthopedist, Dr. Matthew Hansen,

and the entire staff at The Core Institute, and Mercy Gilbert Hospital.

When I first broke my elbows I posted about it here.

Ironically, that post gets more traffic than anything else I've ever written. Just in case you were curious about how much traffic it gets, go into Google and type, "X-Rays of my left elbow." I have been the number one hit in google for that going back to April 2008.

I'm not sure why everyone is so interested in my left elbow, because no on ever posts a comment to that thread..., but for some reason it seems to be very popular. I'm not scheduled to get any more x-rays of my elbow for another six months. At that time they won't be checking to see if the arm has healed, but rather to make sure that the added hardware still looks good.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm so glad you're healing up as well as you are! Is the hardware a permanent addition or will they be taking it out someday?

And I'm not anonymous -- this is Tristi. :) Just using a different account right now.

Dan Olsen said...

Hi Tristi,

I've been told that the hardware could be removed, but it would require another operation to do so.

As long as it doesn't inhibit me, I'll probably just keep it.