Broken legs and ankles heal better if you walk on them within weeks

I had a bad pilon fracture of my ankle a couple of years ago with both a break on Tibia and Fibia.

I fell off a ramp whilst pushing a wheelbarrow full of rubble into a skip (should've stuck to building code instead of building a house!).

Normally that type of injury is associated with car crashes when someone instinctively puts all their force on the brake and the shock of the crash travels up the pedal into the ankle.

It was a really scary time for me as the doctors were trying to manage expectations and plan how to fix my ankle. There was a possibility of my foot being fused to my leg permanently at 90 degrees angle.

Fortunately I had an awesome team of orthopaedic surgeons who managed to do ORIF surgery with about £70,000 worth of titanium inside my leg.

6 weeks later I was out of my plaster cast and into a "moon boot" with my physio starting and doctor telling me to put weight on it already as the titanium was holding it together effectively. Always pushing me to break the mental barrier of protecting my broken leg.

Long story short, physio, putting weight on my toes meant my ankle is about 95% back to how it was, just a small limitation in dorsiflexion and plantarflexion.

Can run, cycle, Jiu-jitsu etc.

NHS emergency care - great!

NHS physio care - poor, had to go private.

Here's a photo of the damage - https://photos.app.goo.gl/z8J8RfhnZ2jnVHFYA

I crushed my leg a few years ago, my wife and I dropped a bridge on it, and I suddenly had 200kg of steel and wood grind down the back of it, and the front slammed into a concrete footing.

Internally degloved my calf, broke my fibula, and took a chunk out of my tibia - and being me, decided to ice it, strap it, look out for compartmentalisation and rhabdomyolysis, and hobble around on it until it was better. Took about two months before I could walk normally.

I only know what I did to it because I dislocated my knee last year skiing, and they were thoroughly confused as to what they were looking at - had to explain that I mashed my leg and couldn’t be bothered wasting my time sitting in A&E for a few days.

Either way, it healed just fine with zero intervention. My calf is a slightly funny shape from the fascia still being bunched up around my ankle, but it doesn’t seem to do any harm, and the break to the fibula healed almost perfectly - slightly offset but works just fine.