I also broke my ankle while hiking in a remote mountain area--stepped over a fallen log with my left foot, ground collapsed beneath my foot, my leg went down to the right and my foot was popped up to the left, snapping the end of my fibula. Mountain rescue team had to come in with a gurney and take me out. Ambulance took me from the trail head to the hospital.
My ORIF surgery was about a week and a half later. I was in agony immediately after coming out of anesthesia because the nerve block didn't "take." The shot to redo it was painful but the pain relief in my lower leg, ankle, and foot was immediate.
My surgery was a little less than 5 weeks ago. I was in a nonremovable splint for 1 week, then a boot I was allowed to remove only a few minutes at a time for another week before getting my stitches out, and since then I've been allowed to take the boot off whenever I'm resting.
Even while my lower leg and foot were still partially numb from the nerve block after surgery, something didn't feel right with the sensations in my left anke, foot, and toes. At 5 weeks after surgery, my foot and toes still feel partially numb, plus the circulation feels cut off and the left foot is much darker than the right. I often have weird sensations, such as feeling like the bottom of my foot is on fire or feeling like a cool liquid is running down the outside of my ankle when in fact nothing is there. I cannot sleep at night because I can't get comfortable. It's not possible for me to sleep on my back back I have spondylolisthesis in my lower spine with bilateral pars defects, which has allowed a vertebra to slip out of place by about 50% and makes it very painful to move if I lie on my back.
Meanwhile although the swelling has gone down, my left foot is noticeably swollen all the time. Keeping it elevated all day helps but I go nuts sitting on my butt all day on the sofa with my legs up on pillows. Even the bottom of my foot is swollen to the extent that when I rest it on the floor, my toes don't touch the floor. And the skin on the outside of my ankle and the outside half of my left foot is grotesquely peeling off in sheets, while my calf muscle appears to me to be pitifully atrophied compared with the right leg.
I've pestered my doctor about all this stuff constantly. I'd maybe feel a little sorry for him if not for the fact that I have my doubts that I really had to have surgery but he talked me into it after wrenching my ankle twice with all his might the first time I saw him, which was on the fourth day after the accident, and then telling me it was mildly displaced and showed signs of being an unstable fracture and therefore I needed surgery.
He says everything I've described above is "normal" at this point post surgery. I want to tell him I sort of hate him at this point. No amount of "this is normal" or "it'll get better" is going to stop me being angry. However, I'm going to let my anger serve as a motivator to get me back to walking and living as normally as possible, as soon as possible.
In regard to feeling unsafe on crutches, it's not just your imagination: they ARE unsafe. I fell backwards about 1/3 of the way down my basement steps while trying to come up the steps on crutches the night before my surgery. I bought a knee roller with a basket, and I love it, but since I no longer will attempt to go up or down stairs and crutches and I can't navigate stairs with the knee roller, the only way I can get upstairs to take a bath or downstairs in the basement to do laundry is to go down the stairs on my butt and up the stairs on my butt or on my hands and knees. Even my doctor told me butt scooting or crawling is the only safe way up or down stairs.