Finally. Eight and half months after breaking my foot, my doc gave me a clean bill of health today. Well, actually, he said I was 90% healed, but that was good enough for any reasonable activity. The spiral fracture has fused along the entire length of the break, and though the bone still has a month or two before it is 100% healed, it’s more or less done the important stuff. Over the next year, the bone should solidify more, with the few jutting parts smoothing off. I wonder if the bone will fuse well enough to look more or less natural despite the new shape.

What did I learn? First, don’t take any walking surface for granted. It seemed like a safe patch of concrete which I’d tread before thousands of times, but sometimes even the most familiar setting will catch you off guard. A confluence of speed, turning, angle and surface smoothness did me in that day. Second, I learned that I’m a slow healer. It took me perhaps twice as long as it should have to get fixed back up.

Third, I discovered that the “Beckham treatment” seems to work. Though I lost the crutches three and a half months after the break and could start to walk again, at the six-month mark, the bone still wasn’t healing properly. Note the image below: the middle image, marked “APR,” was a month after I lost the crutches, and that did not change too much a month after that, when I started using the ultrasound therapy called SAFHS.

Note the difference in mid-July, just a month and a half after starting the therapy. It all filled in pretty strongly except for the top part–and this morning, the x-ray showed that closed up as well, a month later. Without the SAFHS treatment, I don’t know how far along my foot would be, but I’d be willing to wager that it still wouldn’t be healed. The ultrasound really seems to work–which is probably why they’re now using it to grow new teeth. I don’t know if that’ll work, but I can recommend it for bone repair, if your doctor thinks it’ll work for you.