@don34 Don, along with my fellow mentor, John, I welcome you to Connect. I had so much to tell you, that there will be a second post following this one.

I wanted to offer some experience about removal of surgical hardware after an ankle fracture. I had mine removed 9 months ago. My fracture happened 2 years ago with surgery and internal hardware fixation done at Mayo. I had pain all the time (like I was getting kicked in the ankle) from the titanium plates and the skin would be warm to the touch. Sometimes it throbbed a bit, and the skin over the plates was starting to develop some pigment. About 6 months after the injury, I developed chronic hives and had to stay on antihistamines all the time or I would have large patches of hives on my body anywhere, and it was worst where my clothing was tighter such as where elastic made contact. The surgeon didn't connect this with my hardware, although I did, and since the hardware was removed, I have not had the hives at all.

I am in my recovery period from hardware removal and I have had tightness, ankle swelling after walking, and some sharp pains related to the swelling, and my ankle would sometimes collapse under me with a sharp pain when I took a step particularly when I was fatigued, and I wouldn't be able to walk unless I held my ankle like it was fixed in a cast.

There are several factors in all of this. My injury was a fracture, a dislocation, and a bad sprain all at the same time, and it was compound with the broken fibula protruding through the skin. This injury was significant enough to cause nerve damage and at the time it happened, I could feel a nerve firing and pulsing repeatedly although at that time because of shock, it wasn't horribly painful. I straightened my dislocated ankle just enough to back off the nerve that was firing, and didn't straighten it completely because I didn't want to cause more damage, and it was put in a splint by the paramedic who took me to the hospital. During my healing after surgery it felt like I had something under my foot in the cast and I would get sharp pains through my toes. I got that same pain when my ankle swelled even long after the cast was removed.

I used a lace up ankle brace. My tendons and ligaments would take turns hurting, and some of that is caused by a muscle spasm. My calf would get tight a lot. I would work out the muscle kinks by massaging it out with a hard plastic ball or let my leg rest on that ball under its own weight on a painful muscle. These are things my physical therapist recommended. If a tendon hurt, it was because the muscle attached to it was in a knot, and loosening that helped. Muscles work in opposition so the inside of my calf was stronger than the outside that had been rolled during the injury. After sitting with my leg elevated for a couple years, I lost a lot of muscle and strength from atrophy due to non use and babying my ankle.

I had custom orthotics from a podiatrist and I got new ones made since the injury and surgery. I had been circling my ankle around to keep it moving and it would crunch a lot, and that seemed to be helping if I did this first thing when I got up each day. It was a conversation with my PT about this that was a light bulb moment. She did a mobilization and showed me a modified way that I could do this at home to get the talus moving because it can get stuck and lock up the ankle. I wondered if the ankle brace I had been wearing for 2 years was adding to the problem, so I took it off and any time I felt ankle pain, I did the mobilization technique. For the first time in 2 years, I am walking without my ankle collapsing. I have been able to be on my feet longer and up to the point of being so fatigued by it, that I collapsed when I got home and couldn't stay awake. Then after 2 days of recovery, I am stronger. I also went trail riding on my horse for 4 hours which does use leg strength, and again I was trashed by that, but then everything including my back gets stronger a few days later. I was weak from 2 years of sitting most of the time, and only now am I strong enough to not need to sit and rest so much. An ankle injury is a very difficult recovery after which you are weak and it takes a very long time to rebuild strength. My podiatrist told me it took me years to build that body strength as I grew to be an adult, so it doesn't come back so fast. I do not have ankle pain now, and removing the hardware was a good thing.

Another good thing is I have a very good physical therapist with a doctorate who is also an expert in myofascial release which is a way to release tight tissue. Here is our discussion about MFR which can help relieve tightness and scar tissue after surgery part of which is from the surgical path itself.
Myofascial Release Therapy (MFR) for treating compression and pain: https://connect.mayoclinic.org/discussion/myofascial-release-therapy-mfr-for-treating-compression-and-pain/

Have you heard of myofascial release before?