After 4 months on the sidelines, I’m finally going in for surgery on Friday morning. I have a fracture of the lateral process of the talus, which is an ankle bone that sits below the tibia and fibula and above the calcaneus, or heel bone. The talus has a poor blood supply and doesn’t heal. People fracture it in car wrecks or freak accidents. It’s a 1 in 1000 ankle injury, but it’s 15% of all snowboarding ankle injuries. Hence the name “snowboarder’s fracture.”

I should’ve known better. I was X-rayed at Snowbasin Emergency clinic at the base of the slopes. The doc gave me the good news that the X-rays didn’t show a fracture, and I wish he’d known to tell me that anyone who injures an ankle snowboarding should be aware of the risk of a talus fracture. Still, I can’t fault him, and every specialist I’d seen told me how difficult it was to identify this fracture with an X-ray. About half of these talus fractures  go undiagnosed for months, which is when permanent disability sets in.

I should’ve listened to my gut when my left ankle swelled up like a pregnant woman’s. I was told I had a sprain and rehabbed it as such. I hiked, I biked, I did jiu-jitsu. Even if I’d immobilized, it’s doubtful it would’ve healed. There are a few bones in the body that don’t heal, and this is one of them.