By Mike Maggio
“Every bone that I could break in the ankle was broken,” says Donald Rooney, after a fall from a second-story roof while working as a carpenter contractor.
The fall twisted one of Rooney’s ankles in the “opposite direction,” and he underwent surgery in which the team “put in three pins and a screw.” Following months of healing, Rooney returned to work, but the ankle was never the same.
“At first, it was stiff, but not a major problem,” he says.
However, he gradually began to develop arthritis in the injured ankle. It became painful, and the ankle joint increasingly lost movement. He began taking cortisone shots and tried braces without any success.