Lindsey Vonn has finally left hospital after her horrific leg break but the American skiing great has a very long road to recovery ahead of her.
In a lengthy post to Instagram on Monday morning, the 41-year-old revealed the devastating extent of her injuries and that doctors saved her from losing her leg after crashing at the Winter Olympics in Italy.
Vonn said she is in a wheelchair and will be for the foreseeable future. She fought back tears at times in a video from her home in Colorado where she explained how much pain she has already had to overcome.
‘I had a complex tibia fracture, I also fractured my fibia head and the reason it was so complex was because I had compartment syndrome,’ Vonn explained. ‘Compartment syndrome is when you have so much trauma to one area that there is too much blood and it gets stuck. It basically crushes everything – muscles, nerves, tendons, it dies.
‘Dr Tom Hackett saved my leg from being amputated. He did what is called a fasciotomy, he cut open both sides of my leg and let it breathe and he saved me.
‘It will take around a year for all of the bones to heal and then I will decide if I want to take out all the metal or not, and then go back into surgery and finally fix my ACL. Life is life, we have to take the punches as they come.’
Lindsey Vonn is out of hospital but is only at the start of her recovery from a broken leg
Vonn tore her ACL in a crash before the Winter Olympics, something she said was actually a good thing because if that hadn’t happened, Dr Hackett would not have been on hand to help her.
‘If I hadn’t torn my ACL, which I would have done anyways in this crash, Doctor Tom Hackett wouldn’t have been there,’ Vonn said. ‘He wouldn’t have been able to save my leg.
‘He saved my leg from being amputated. I always talk about everything happening for a reason… I feel very lucky and grateful for him, for this six-hour surgery.’
Vonn revealed she also broke her ankle in the crash and that she needed a vital blood transfusion after one of her multiple surgeries to combat low haemoglobin.
‘I was in the hospital a little longer than I hoped because I had very low haemogloin from the blood loss from all the surgeries,’ Vonn added. ‘I was really struggling, the pain was a little bit out of control and I had to have a blood transfusion.
‘That helped me a lot and I turned the corner and now I am out. I am in a wheelchar right now, I am very much immobile and I will be in a wheelchair for a while because I also broke my right ankle.
‘I hope I can be on crutches in a little bit but we will see.’
Vonn crashed during the women’s downhill final on February 8 and was airlifted to hospital by helicopter.
Lindsey Vonn has undergone five surgeries since hurting her leg at the Winter Olympics
Vonn added as a caption to her video: ‘I hope I explained my injury well enough. I’m not a doctor so if I don’t explain something perfectly please forgive me.
‘When the injury happened the situation was quite challenging in many ways but in the end, the situation was brought back into control. Again, thank you Dr Tom Hackett.
‘It will be a long road but I’ll get there. At least I’m out of the hospital. Love you all.’
Last week, Vonn shared an astonishing X-ray showing dozens of metal pins placed inside her leg to hold it together.
‘I’m bionic for real now,’ she joked.
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