 Good morning, my beautiful friends! I have had too much coffee today, but that's all right. I'm just gonna keep drinking it. As many of you guys know, we just passed the six-month amputation anniversary, so I lost my leg six months ago. And I wanted to take some time today to talk about what it was like before that, specifically living with a fused ankle. I did a lot of research into what it would be like living with a replaced ankle, and there wasn't a lot of good information out there. Same thing with a fused ankle when I looked for videos about that. So for anyone out there considering ankle fusion, I wanted to give kind of first-person perspective what it was like living with a fused ankle for over a decade. So if you don't know my story, when I was 13, I had a really bad horseback riding accident, shattered my ankle. They did a couple big-deal surgeries, but after two years, when I was 15, there was zero cartilage left in my ankle joint, and the only option was to fuse it. When you fuse an ankle, you are essentially cutting out that joint so you don't have an ankle joint anymore. And I always describe it as like basically screwed my foot to my leg. The thing is you still have motion when they take out your ankle joint because you have like your sub-tailor joint, and you have your talus joint, talus joint. You have other joints in that area of your body that allow you to still kind of look like you're walking like a normal person once you adjust to your fusion. The actual ankle fusion surgery. I don't know how it's done nowadays, but again back over a decade ago when I was 15, I was in the hospital for three nights just to make sure pain was under control. I do remember it was pretty painful. I mean, they cut an entire joint out of your body. It's a pretty big incision. It's pretty uncomfortable. And then I was on the couch for two weeks straight with my leg elevated above my head, propped up on pillows, getting all of that swelling down because there was a lot of it. And then after that, it was being off of it, being on crutches for I think about three months, and then slowly learning to walk after that, working with physical therapists, becoming a little bit more weight-bearing day by day until I learned to walk again. And then I learned to walk pretty normally. So I had my ankle fused and I had a giant scar down the side of it. I think they can do it like arthroscopically now, so you don't have big scars anymore, but I'm not sure. And it healed. It took a while. I had to stay on crutches for quite a few months and eventually learned to walk again. Learned to walk again looking kind of normal, but again the issue was it never felt great. I went back in for surgery about a year after that to remove the hardware because they had a bunch of screws in place and they're holding it all together. So that kind of worked for a little while. I was eating Advil all the time. My ankle still always hurt, but I was able to kind of live a normal life through the very tail end of high school and the very beginning of college. Second semester of college was basically spent going to the doctor and coming back to campus and going to the doctor and coming back to campus because I was having so much pain again that basically continued. I won't bore you with the details of that, but essentially for ten years I lived with a fused ankle. There were periods in there where I was okay. Two quick things, my story is not everybody's story. A lot of people get their ankles fused and are great for two decades. For whatever reason, my ankle just never did well. There was always pain. There was always issues. They were always going back in to clean something else out or to try something else. And so that is why I was having surgeries after surgeries after procedures and injections and things like that. That does not happen for everybody. And secondly, you can actually live a pretty normal looking life with a fused ankle. It's hard to adjust to initially, but then bodies are amazing. And so it looks like you are walking normally because like I said, there are other joints in your foot in the lower part of your ankle that take up the motion that was lost by that major ankle joint and allow you to walk. But that is also the problem because those joints were never designed for the amount of stress that is put on them. Ankle fusions, I was always told, hopefully last 15 years, 20 years. That's like a good length for them to last. Mine lasted 12. When you're walking or going to the gym or doing anything that involves weight-bearing activity, the joints that are now taking all that stress are a lot smaller than the major joint that was designed in your body to take all that stress. And so they start breaking down. They start having issues and that's what happened for me. There are different options for different people in different situations, not everybody. Let me be really clear about that. In fact, not most people who have ankle fusions are ever going to face amputation. That is a very, very, very rare situation. So please do not think that if you're having your ankle fused, oh my God, I'm going to lose my leg in a few years. No, talk to your doctor. My situation is kind of unique and everything that happened and everything that continued to happen. So what was life actually like with a fused ankle? Well, when it didn't hurt, so there was periods of time or those weeks or two where there wasn't a ton of pain, it was okay. I could walk pretty normally. I could participate in not super high-impact activities. I could never run because that always hurt and there was always a lot of stress to put on it that was too much for it. But I went to the gym all the time. I went hiking all the time. I walked my dogs around the block. I did jujitsu. I swam. I did all different kinds of things, but I did them because I wanted to live life. I didn't do them because it wasn't without pain. They'll let me clarify. There were some days where it was okay up until about two years ago. I was able to live a really normal life. Ankle fusions are a really great option for a lot of people. It was always weird not being able to point my toes the same way I could my other toes because like your ankle stuck, right? So like it only moves like that far. So that was odd and sometimes my foot would get like kind of stuck trying to get into skinny jeans because like you can't put your foot down all the way. Like you can't bench ankle anymore, but those are very, very small headaches in the grand scheme of things. But then I would step the wrong way or I would just wake up and it would be a bad day that would turn to a bad week and I would be super swollen and being a lot of pain and having to eat painkillers and it just was not a good situation for me. I kept it going as long as I could, but eventually had to look at more serious options. I personally think a fused ankle was a good option for the time that I had it. I don't think there was anything that anyone could have done differently or done better and I was able to make it work. Like I said, I was able to do things like go hiking with my dogs. I was able to train in jiu-jitsu. I was able to go swimming and live a fairly normal life except when I was recovering from surgery after surgery and except when I couldn't walk because it hurt so bad. So it was a mixed bag, but when it was good, it was good. And that is the case for most people. It works well for most people. So if you're watching this because this is something you're facing, that's a little bit of my story. If you have questions, feel free to leave them in the comment section. I will try to get back to as many as I possibly can. I'm really sorry this is something you're facing because you have such an issue with your ankle or you're living in pain, but know that it can be a really good option. There are other options out there too. Oftentimes the option is between ankle fusion or ankle replacement. I never had a replaced ankle, but talk to your doctor about the option. I hope that answered some of your questions. If you're confused as why, I ended up how I did. There are so many videos on my channel about it, so check out the rest of them. Thank you guys for listening. I look forward to talking to you guys in the comment section. I love you and I will see you in the next video. Bye guys.