Nicholas's appointment

First, lets start with how frustrating it has been to get to this appointment. We had this appointment scheduled since the 5th of October and the week before they call us and say that the doctor no longer is seeing patients in the afternoon. So they had to move his appointment to the morning, which required him to take a whole day from work of vacation pay verses just an hour. So we got there, at his newly scheduled time (an hour drive) to wait in the waiting room for an hour and them to tell us that the xray machine was broken. So we rescheduled, took another day from work and finally made it in. And this is what we found....
This may seem normal to some, but no...that is NOT his knee joint...that is all his upper leg....where it looks as if two different bones are coming together...that is one bone, just where the fracture is. The rod and the nails at the top make me squirm. EWW! But yes, the doctor tells him that there is a fine outter layer over the fracture that fuses the bone back together but the bone density is still not smoothed over. Then procedes to say up to 15 years....yes, FIFTEEN YEARS???? WTW?
So his next interpretation was...we want to start out the least invasive and work our way up to most as needed. So, Nicholas is back on pain medicine for 8 weeks and then will go back for another view by a new doctor (this doctor is moving south and doing no more procedures at this point....in my thoughts, he doesnt want to deal with his mess up and leaving it for someone else, so just giving him the pain meds to get by on til then....but I'm not a doctor so...). This appointment we got more answers and I truly think it was because he's on his way out anyways. Last appointment when Nicholas told him of his falling down the stairs episodes the doc said, "well you did break you leg, it's going to be painful". Today he explained the procedure THE OTHER DOCTOR WOULD DO, he answered Nick's questions differently and wrote a "maximum recovery letter" stating, "It is to my best medical knowledge that Nicholas will always have a medical impairment that is highly likely."
We have had a second opinion appointment scheduled for next week all along because we knew something wasnt right, but this orthapedic was relunctant to take on Nicholas' care full time because he was someone else's patient. So now we hope that our doctor leaving the state will allow for him to do so and his care will be closer to home, with a much more trusted doctor. We thank you all for sticking by us through this journey and continuing to pray when we said something still isnt right. Please keep the prayers coming though, as today was a huge disappointment to Nicholas. The doctor said he feels he will never get back to competitve sports like he had been able to do before...it's going to be more of a "last man picked for the team" sort of activity now. And that took his hopes and confidence down quite a few degrees. So please please keep praying!!! I hate seeing him down and discouraged like this.