Recovery from broken fibula / tendon damage - how long should it take?

[stealthsquiggle]

Background in brief: DH slipped and turned his ankle in early July. Over the next few days it transpired that he had broken his fibula and ripped apart the tendons in his ankle. He ended up having an operation to put a screw through his ankle. 3.5 months later, he is still hobbling really badly and clearly in a fair amount of pain.

He starts physio tomorrow, so maybe we will get some answers from that, but in the meantime, I would really like to know how much longer I am he is likely to have to put up with this.

It took me about three years, yes years before I was totally pain free after such an injury. It helped to wear an elasticated ankle support when I knew I was going to be on my feet a lot. It was a further two years before I felt I had got the spring back in my ankle. That was a lot of years ago so treatment has moved on and maybe recovery time is therefore shorter.

Thanks, treesntrees. Since I posted, DH has finally had a session with a really good (private) physio, as opposed to the really useless junior doctors that he has seen on his last few appointments (consultant himself was ok, but we only saw him once when DH was admitted).

Physio gave him some (hopefully) realistic time frames for recovery - and he said 12 months, and even then that the flexibility might not be back. Interestingly, he also explained the pros and cons of having the screw removed - basically that with it in DH might always have limited flexibility in the ankle, vs risks and recovery time from another operation. I think we both feel better now, as we had been wondering if there was something wrong and that he wasn't recovering and/or they had made a mess of the operation. Physio was quite that DH has basically not been given any information at the hospital.