00:00Well, guys, after two weeks, I finally made it out of the hospital.
00:04It has been quite the journey and by far the most extreme and painful and challenging injury I've ever faced
00:14in my entire life, times 100.
00:18I'll give you the full rundown.
00:21Basically, I had a complex tibia fracture.
00:25I also fractured my fibular head, my tibial plateau, just kind of everything was in pieces.
00:33And the reason why it was so complex was because I had compartment syndrome.
00:40And compartment syndrome is when you have so much trauma to one area of your body that there's too much
00:47blood and it gets stuck.
00:49And it basically crushes everything in the compartment.
00:53So all the muscle and nerves and tendons, it all kind of dies.
01:00And Dr. Tom Hackett saved my leg.
01:04He saved my leg from being amputated.
01:07He did what's called a fasciotomy where he cut open like both sides of my leg, kind of fellated open,
01:15so to speak.
01:17He let it breathe and he saved me.
01:23And, you know, I always talk about everything happens for a reason.
01:26But if I hadn't torn my ACL, which I would have torn anyways with this crash, if I hadn't done
01:32that, Tom wouldn't have been there.
01:34He wouldn't have been able to save my leg.
01:35So I feel very lucky and grateful for him for the six-hour surgery he put in on Wednesday to
01:45rebuild it, which went amazingly well.
01:48But I was in the hospital a little longer than I had hoped because I had a very low hemoglobin
01:56from all the blood loss of all the surgeries.
02:01I was really struggling, pain was a little bit out of control, and I had a blood transfusion, and that
02:09helped me a lot.
02:11I turned the corner, and now I am out.
02:15So I want to say thank you to Tom and all the medical staff in Italy and Colorado that helped
02:21take care of me.
02:22It's been quite the journey, and it's going to be a long road.
02:28I'm in a wheelchair right now.
02:30I'm very much immobile.
02:32I'll be in a wheelchair for a while because I also broke my right ankle.
02:42So I hope I can be on crutches in a little bit, but we'll see and probably at least be
02:47on crutches for two months.
02:51But I'm going to get right to work on rehab and see what I can do and take it one
02:59step at a time like I always do.
03:00But it's been, I can't tell you how painful it's been.
03:06It's been really hard, and it was definitely not the way I wanted to end my Olympics.
03:14But it's been really inspiring to watch my teammates.
03:18Everyone's just been incredible, and watching Team USA dominate has been really uplifting.
03:25So I'm really proud of all you guys.
03:29and, yeah, I'll keep you guys updated.
03:33It's going to be a long road.
03:36But I always fight.
03:38We'll keep going.
03:39No regrets.
03:42And I just appreciate all the love and support.
03:45It's been really amazing, overwhelming to an extent.
03:49You know, I wish I had ended differently, really.
03:57But I'd rather go down swinging than not try at all.
04:01And I think what I was able to achieve was more than anyone expected to begin with.
04:06You know, this year was incredible and so worth everything.
04:11You know, I worked really hard to get back, and it was so worth it.
04:14You know, this was just one blip on the radar.
04:20It was one thing that I wish didn't happen.
04:23But life is life, and we have to take the punches as they come.
04:28So, I'm going to do the best I can with this one.
04:31It really knocked me down.
04:35But, I'm like Rocky.
04:37I'll just keep getting back up.
04:39I love you guys.
04:40Thank you.
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