Hi,
It's not clear whether you have MS, but if you do I am very happy that you are able to do so much physical exercise. The question you ask doesn't seem to be directly related to MS, however, especially if it is a result of your fractured tibula and fibula. I too had a complex tib/fib fracture of my right leg several years ago and had a rod and screws put in my leg from my knee down. Unfortunately it got badly infected and I had 3 more surgeries in an attempt to clean up the area, finally the rods and screws had to be removed. One year later I fell again and fractured my right hip, which the doctor first put a rod in and one month later I had a full hip replacement.
My leg started to swell badly a few months later, and within six months both my legs were swelling and getting very red. The redness and burning turned out to be from chronic cellulitis from the infection of the tib/fib. It took me five years to get a diagnosis for the bad swelling, which got to be as bad as four times the regular size of my leg. It turned out I had Lymphedema, a result of several lymph nodes being compromised during all the surgeries on my right leg in a short period of time.
I saw over a dozen doctors trying to find out why my legs were swelling and each time I brought up Lymphedema as a possibility, which I discovered on the Internet was a common diagnosis for the symptoms I had, I was told that only cancer patients who have lymph nodes removed get that. It wasn't until I went to Sloan Kettering, five years after my legs started to swell, that a doctor agreed to order the diagnostic test for Lymphedema, which validated what I had known. Unfortunately by this time the situation was much worse than it was 5 years before and after a long treatment process I still have periods of time when my legs are so swollen it is difficult to walk on them.
I am not saying you have Lymphedema, in fact you probably don't if only your joints are swelling. My point in telling you about my experience is to encourage you to pursue the situation with your doctors and urge them to take it seriously. If this swelling began after your tib/fib fracture and surgery then definitely go back to the surgeon and see what he says. If he doesn't have an answer or says it is not related to the fracture then ask him who you should see to pursue it. I had dopplers to see if my circulation was okay, which it was, and I was sent to an orthopedist, several vascular surgeons, a dermatologist, and even an infectious disease doctor, and all of them said they didn't know why my legs were swelling so badly and that it couldn't be Lymphedema.
This is just another example of why we must be our own advocates in our search for quality medical care. Good luck to you. And let me know please if you have MS and if that is what caused you to fall.
