There's an alien in my leg!!!!!! (Vin)

Hi everyone this is Vin, Angie asked me to add a post to the blog about what is going on with me.
So last weeekend we got probably our biggest snow storm of the year in N. VT. Smuggs got close to 20 inches!! Needless to say I skied the whole day. In spots the snow was well over knee deep close to mid-thigh deep. For those of you that aren't skiers, that is a good thing. It would look something like this . That's me, for those of you that can't tell what I look like in my ski gear.

On Sunday I went to Jay Peak to ski with some friends. Jay Peak has the reputation for having the most snow of any east coast resort and they did not disappoint on Sunday. What was knee to thigh deep at Smuggs, was nearly waist deep at Jay. But on my second run of the morning as I was skiing in a gladed area (trees) I hit a submerged tree branch just above the top of my ski boot. OUCH!!! Had it been a 1/2 inch lower it would have hit my boot and not been a problem. But alas it was not. For about a half second or so I thought I broke my leg. I heard a snap, which turned out to be the tree branch breaking and some fairly intense pain where it hit. I just kind of lay there for a few minutes to let the pain pass before I moved. I also ended up in a tree well at the base of a pine tree and had to kind of dig my way out of that before I could get up. That is part of the stick in the right of the pic.

After finally getting out of the tree well and getting my skis back on and taking a few more minutes to collect myself from the injury we skied on for a few more runs until lunch. I really couldn't ski very well since any pressure on the front of my shin hurt pretty badly but the snow was sooooo deep that I did not want to stop so I suffered though another 3 or 4 runs. At lunch I was finally able to get a look at my leg and assess the damage. I was not surprised to find a sizable lump on my shin form the impact. After seeing that I called it quits and went home.


It has now been almost a week and the lump is somewhat smaller but is still there. I actually think that I may have rutputed the covering of the muscle (fascia). I can kind of stick my finger tip into the front of my leg where it should be firm. I can also kind of feel the rim of the hole when I feel around. The hole is letting fluid kind of bubble out when I bear weight on the leg. Nice.

The orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Huber, for my teams at JSC visits us on Tuesday so I'll see what he has to say about it then. He is the doc that did surgery on my ankle 2 summers ago and was going to do surgery on Angie's knee before we found out about the pregnancy. The injury probably just a comsmetic kind of thing and the bulge may be there for a while until I decide if I want to have it fixed. It really isn't quite as bad as it looks now that the inital pain is gone.

So far it has not really interfered with my triathlon training. For those of you that do not know, I'm training for a 1/2 ironman distance triathlon in late June. (1.2 mi. swim/56 mi. bike/13.1 mi. run) I can swim and bike without pain as long as I keep some compression on the area but I have not tried to run yet. I'm waiting to see
Dr. Huber on Tuesday before I try running.

Anyway so that is what is new with me.

Vin