Tiger Woods injured

That was on Golf Channel Rewind just a week or so ago.

 

Eleven days on and Eldrick remains in Cedars-Sinai. And today we learn via the LAT that he was found unconscious. Methinks he may be worse off than his team is letting on.

 

Weren’t the police saying he was alert at the scene?

edit: never mind, I see it was a neighbour who came upon the scene.

I think Steiny and company are always going to say little and minimize as much as possible.

 

My son was in a car wreck when he was a senior in high school. Like Tiger, he had multiple open comminuted fractures to both lower legs. That translates as compound fractures, bone sticking through the skin, with the bones broken into multiple pieces. (He also took a traumatic brain injury, which complicated things substantially.) He's got fourteen inches or so of metal rods in his lower legs that formed a nucleus for new bone growth to fuse the pieces around.

Tiger's going to be in a hospital bed for a month or so, give or take, depending on the damage to his nerves, vascular system and blood flow, and any infection that sets up. Our son's orthopedic surgeon did not allow anyone else to touch the bandages over his leg wounds due to the risk of deep infection. He'd redo them every couple of days, adding antibiotic pellets directly into the open leg wounds as they healed. At different times early on we were warned that he was at risk of amputation of first one then the other leg.

Then he'll move to a rehab hospital where he'll start to get some physical therapy. Odds are good that he'll be in a wheelchair for six months to a year. That's a give or take estimate given his physical condition before the wreck, with the condition of his back being something of a wild card. His back may make learning to do transfers from the bed to the wheelchair (or simply doing them, as the learning isn't that hard) more difficult for him, as the stress on his back will be different from normal use. He's starting a long road back. I'd be amazed if he ever played golf competitively again. It isn't unusual for the legs to heal at slightly different lengths, for instance, which will alter his stance and swing geometry.

Tiger still being in the hospital is absolutely normal given the injuries he sustained.

 

I'm always curious when I see terms like "shattered ankle." I know it's not quite like dropping a glass on concrete and pieces flying everywhere, but I'm curious --- in Tiger's case --- exactly what it means.

 

I remember reading that umpire Eric Gregg’s ankle “turned to sand” without any precipitating impact or trauma. Just the result of walking around at his weight.

 

"Geology is the study of pressure and time. That's all it takes, really... pressure... and time...

That, and big goddamn poster."

 

Something like this. The little circles at skin level are surgical staples.

Lower leg after surgical fixation would look like this.



Shattered ankle after surgery.

 

It really feels to me like this story is being highly underplayed. Maybe it’s just that not enough information has been released?

 

Unless there was something illegal about his driving at the time of the accident, he's just a guy who was in a bad car wreck. It's only a story at all because it was Tiger.

 

One more and I'll stop. Both his legs would have looked something like this when he entered the ER.