day 21

Three weeks down today. Three weeks to go before possibly beginning weight-bearing.

I mentioned the amazingly annoying toe tingling and numbness on my last entry. The doc's office spent quite a bit of time on the phone with me on Monday and said they didn't hear anything that scared them. The nurse told me to elevate more aggressively and not to avoid the pain meds so much. She also had me talk to their pain management people who said there are nerve drugs I could take, but most people find the side effects worse than the tingling. Basically, the drugs make you dizzy and "stupid." You can't put sentences together and your brain is fuzzy. Plus, you have to take them constantly, not as needed. I opted out on that one. I also have not been monitoring swelling very well, so they want me to keep an eye on that. I just figured swelling wasn't much of an issue, but when I started paying attention to it, realized it is.  Yesterday I stayed down way more than I wanted to, elevated, took Tylenol in the day and one pain med at night. The tingling was a lot better. Then today, of course, I was in the process of sitting down and the right crutch kind of stuck under my arm. I fell backwards into my chair (luckily) and kind of smacked the foot on the ground as I fell. My foot has been more painful since then. Two steps forward, one step back. Part of the problem with elevating is that it works best for me to be on my left side. I have a body pillow lengthwise and put a pillow on top of that at the foot. My foot goes on top of that. It's not the most functional position. I can read, but web surfing, navigating the iPad... is difficult. TV works in that position though. Being on one side a lot of the day though is uncomfortable. I try to switch around, but feel the swelling coming back so end up back on my side.

I'm trying hard to accept my limitations and just roll with it, but it is hard. Keeping the attitude up can be a challenge. My poor dogs who are used to going to the dog park, for as long a walks as the foot could handle and everywhere in the car are pretty bored. My husband has done an excellent job getting them out, but it's different. They're used to variety. I tell them this is so eventually we can go hiking and for really long walks again. I was even to the point where I didn't think the foot could handle walking on the beach either, so I assume we will be able to do that again too. Just thinking about it gets me excited. Some day.