At home

Hi all, I am now at home. On Monday I took a flight from Bucharest to Amsterdam and then flew from Amsterdam to San Francisco. I left Bucharest at 6:00am and arrived in San Francisco at 1:00pm. Sounds like a short flight but because of the 10 hour time difference it actually was 17 hours from start to finish. The guy in front of me on the plane kept his seat back the entire flight so that made it hard for me to lift my foot at all so it was not a fun flight. I did get a wheelchair ride from the check in counter at Bucharest to the gate, from the gate at Amsterdam, to a waiting area, from there to the gate and from the gate in San Francisco to pick up my luggage. So the airlines took care of me. Well other than in Amsterdam where they were late picking me up so the flight had already started boarding and I had to join the cattle line to get to my seat. On Tuesday I went to visit three doctors. Two for my ankle and one for my glasses. My glasses broke on the next to the last day I was in Bucharest, somehow it seemed a fitting end to my time there this year. The first doctor was my primary care physician who wanted to look at my ankle to see if there was any infection. She was a little concerned but sent me to the orthopedic doctor to have him look at it. The orthopedist was only a little concerned but started me on some antibiotics anyway. He took out the stitches and took some x-rays to see the work. He said that the  doctors in Bucharest did a very good job repairing my ankle. I got my first look at the damage too. I have a steel plate on the outside of my left ankle, held in place by three screws. The area where the leg joins the ankle is where I broke it and I apparently did a good job of breaking it. So the plate is holding all the bones together while they heal. I also have one long screw that goes all the way through my ankle holding the two leg bones together. Normally there is a ligament that perform this function but of course that was torn when I broke my ankle. On the inside of my ankle they repaired the tendon that was torn free during the accident. All in all he said that the repair was good. He said he is always worried when patients have surgery in foreign countries but that the Romanian doctors did good. He did change the amount of time that I have to be off my ankle. The doctors in Romanian said to immobilize my ankle for three weeks and no weight on it for six weeks. He said immobilized for 6 weeks and no weight on it for twelve weeks. He would have put it in a cast but he wants to be able to look at it because of the infection concern. He gave me a big boot to put it in. The boot looks like a ski boot and it immobilizes my ankle. I will take a picture and put it on my next input. So that means no weight on it until the first week of October. So I will have to figure out how to teach one-footed for a while, that should be fun since I like to walk around and write on the board. My foot looks better each day, almost all the swelling is gone now. I

want to take this opportunity to thank all the great people in Romania who went out of their way to help me during this time.  To do all that you did for a me says so much about you as wonderful people. When people ask me if I want to go back again next year, I say how can I not go back, the people in Vaslui are the greatest people in the world. So, thanks to all of you who helped me when I needed it, I can never repay you for your kindness and concern. 

Talk with you soon

Mark