day 61

So I've been trying the one crutch thing for a while. It works well at home but I suspect I've been regularly putting more than the 75% of my weight on the foot. That doesn't seem to be a huge problem, but I am more swollen and have been having more pain. It is just so nice to have at least one hand to carry things with. Since the one crutch at home was going so well, I got overconfident and went to the grocery store thinking I could do the shopping without the stupid sit down cart that makes me feel a bit humiliated. On hundred feet into the store, I knew that was a mistake and went back for the cart. The store just seemed so huge! Very sad.

Anyway, I've been pushing it a bit for the last few days so decided to try to take it easier today. Hopefully that will enable me to push it the next few days. I can't imagine working right now with this foot. Those of you who have gone back to work within a month or so have my admiration and sympathy. I'm worried about going back and teaching. I'm constantly on my feet what with the actual instructing and then wandering among the desks helping and keeping kids focused. Gonna have to do it from the front of the room for a while. Scary!

When I went out yesterday, I realized just how cooped up I've been. I was wheeling through Costco looking wide eyed at all the stuff. The thought going through my head was, "Gosh, there's a whole world out here and I'm missing it!" Cabin fever has taken over. I'm more than cranky, having hateful thoughts and just generally living far too much in my own head. Joni Mitchell has a song that says, "When you dig too deep, you lose good sleep and it makes you heavy company."  I'm pretty much there. Can't wait until this is over!

In the previous paragraph, I keep wanting to delete the "hateful thoughts" piece, but I think it's important for people who are thinking about this surgery just how hard it is emotionally so am leaving it in.

Off to do physical therapy.

Pain - 1 to 2, swelling 2 - 5 (yikes!)

day 59

I can't believe it's been almost two months! When I look back, I remember how hard it's been, but in hindsight, the time has gone fairly quickly. I remember my first doctor appointment. When in the waiting room, I watched people in various post surgery phases coming in for their appointments. Patients came in wheelchairs, on knee walkers and bearing weight on crutches. Observing them all, I kept thinking, "I'll be there someday." My next appointment won't even be on crutches. Very exciting.

It's easy to sit here, look back and talk about how well things went. The day to day, moment to moment, was and still is hard. For me, I am so close to 100% WB that it is hard to not just fling those crutches away and walk. I've come so close. That's probably why the swelling is a bit worse. I want to go hop in my car and drive. Really, the thing that stops me from just driving around the block to test things out is the fact I'd have to do it without the boot. That's a scary thought. The boot means protection and I'm not quite ready to take it off yet. To top that off, life doesn't always cooperate with what is going on with our bodies. As I've said, my Rottie had ACL surgery and I now have to take him out on leash. That sounds a lot easier than it is. This morning I finally got frustrated and dumped one crutch as we were negotiating the too narrow ramp off of our deck. That made things easier to hold onto the leash, but the one crutch was awkward. I was using it on the bad foot side, but have been practicing and it is easier on the good foot side. I think I'm going to one crutch it most of the time now because I definitely can do it while maintaining the WB restrictions. I don't know what we would have done if the dog had needed surgery when I was non WB. You do what you have to do, but it certainly would have been challenging!

Overall, my foot feels good. I'm off pain meds. I did want a Tylenol last night, but collapsed in my chair and pretty much forgot about it. I'm putting 75% (and sometimes more) of my weight on my surgery side, I'm confident I will be at 100% on schedule, which is in 1 1/2 weeks or so. It is possible I may be comfortable doing full WB ahead of schedule. I spoke to the nurses last week and they said that theoretically I could be 100% then, but I would have a lot more pain and swelling. They have found that doing it gradually is much easier on the patient, but that I am healed and to use my judgement. If it hurts, I've pushed too hard. Again, I can't believe I'm almost there. It's surreal.

Pain - 1, swelling - 2 - 4.

day 54

All things considered, things are going well. Pain is minimal. As far as swelling, I really have nothing to compare mine to, but my foot is always back to almost normal in the morning ao I figure that is going well. If my body could handle the crutch use better, I think I could be up all day without being too miserable. I'm not sure I could be up all day for multiple days in a row. I'd probably need a mid-week day where I take it a bit easy since my body is not back to 100% yet. My foot has done better than I imagined and I'm pretty sure I can be at 100% weight bearing on schedule - in two and a half weeks. Of course, I'm totally excited about that prospect!!!!!

This brings me to the crutches. I'm old. I've had 53 years to tear this body down and consequently have a cantankerous back and a wrist that needs a lot of mindful care to keep from swelling and hurting badly. For the most part, I've learned to live with my aging issues and they don't get too bad. Crutches change all that. My body moves unnaturally. Combine that with a walking boot that does not, by any means, promote a natural gait and I end up with a body that hurts. Now that I'm up and about more, I'm aggravating those susceptible parts. To put it bluntly, my back hurts like hell. I'm forcing myself to take it easy today because I can tell the back wants to go out on me and that is the last thing I want right now. I've been sleeping downstairs on the couch and I don't think that is helping either. Tonight I need to butt walk up the narrow, steep old farmhouse stairs to our bedroom and sleep in a real bed. Hopefully, that will help. My wrist is also threatening to become an issue too. Thankfully, being able to put weight on my foot has kept that at bay; I'm hoping I can keep it from getting worse.

As I think back to recovery and what to tell people who are going through this, I realize that, for me at least, the first two weeks were a blur where I don't know what I would have done without someone there most of the time to help me out. After that, progress was slow, so I'd say that the first 5 weeks were really rough. Pain, swelling, trouble being mobile or staying up long enough to cook simple things like oatmeal in the microwave, confusion on just how I should deal with all of that... made that time a challenge, to say the least. By the time of my 6 week post operation appointment, I knew I was going to be able to put weight on my foot and was able to start doing some things around the house with reasonable comfort. Now, a bit over 7 weeks out, I'm ready to roll and am looking forward to pushing things to get back to normal.

This has been a hard surgery. The lack of mobility is very, very difficult. Even if I could drive, it would be hard to go about life as usual. For example, going to the grocery store is fine, but how do you carry those groceries into the house? If you are going to do this or a similar surgery, do whatever you can to have people to help and understand you will be pretty incapacitated for quite some time.

I'm rambling, so time to sign off and go read on the deck.

day 49

I've been able to "walk" more. Yesterday I did to the end of our private road twice and went to the neighbor's house to ride their stationary bike. My last jaunt to the end of the road, at about 7 PM, took everything out of me. Today I am tired and just want to be lazy (getting too much into that habit) but will force myself to go to the gym.

 I did take the dogs out, but just in our pasture. They seem to like it that I am coming out with them again. Yesterday the lab, who is not your typical excited lab, got all wiggly and waggy when I came out with them. It was pretty cute. Tomorrow the Rottie gets his ACL surgery which should make things even more interesting. The vet keeps them for two days and I'm tempted to ask them to keep him for a couple more just so he's that much more stable when he comes home. I'm very nervous about taking him out on leash while I'm on crutches. He's the best dog we've ever had as far as pulling, but he is a large dog and if he sees his dog or people friends, he will get excited.

My foot is kinda swollen today. Yesterday, for the whole day, my toes looked like little sausages jammed together in a tight package. I kept massaging, icing, did a contrast bath, everything I could think of, but they just would not go down. I was a little worried, but this morning they looked fine. Still, the main issues I am having are with the forefoot and the toes. I really have no pain in the heel, very little mid-foot, but it hurts to massage and manipulate the toes and forefoot. I assume that's because of the tendon work on the toes because I know soft tissue heals a lot slower than bone. I can also feel the plate in my upper right part of the foot when I massage and it is not comfortable. I tend to avoid that area or just rub it carefully. Thankfully, I can't feel it when I walk.

So, in evaluating progress - I can partial weight bear, walk a bit of distance if I spread it throughout the day, do most of my physical therapy without pain including the ABCs with my foot and lots of circles... I do not need prescription pain meds any more, the heel feels great, I can stay up for over two hours without too much of an issue. I can do the bike for 20 minutes and am able to do some things at the gym.

Continuing challenges include the toes that really hurt when I try to do one of the therapy exercises where I gently push them down to keep the tendons from tightening up and pulling them back into claws, forefoot and toe swelling and no driving (sob!!!!). Also, it is weird because I do not normally sweat when I lift weights; I've just done them for so long that my body is used to it, but I soaked my hair and sweated like a..........well.....a pig when I went to the gym last time. Weird.

Pain 1 to 3 in toes and forefoot, swelling 1 in heel and 2 to 5 in forefoot and toes.

day 46

Good day. I did light walking (with the bad canines, of course) with weight bearing and then went to the gym. Of course, I wanted to do an amazing workout, but forced myself to take it easy. I did the bike for about 12 minutes, then did weights - upper and lower body. All in all, 45 minutes. The bike felt great. It seemed to flex my foot in a really gentle way and I think that doing that 3 days a week will help my foot a lot. I'd like to do it more, but I hate asking people to take me all over the place, so am trying to do the minimum of asking for rides. It felt great just to get out and do something normal! I was careful with the weights and did about 1/2 the weight of what I was doing pre surgery. Then I came home and made a huge salad so I'll be able to munch on it for a few days, fed the dogs and collapsed! I can't believe how tired I am. The foot is not too swollen, but I have massaged it about three times today and iced it right after the gym. I think I can do 20  minutes on the bike next time. Every time I want to push it, I have to remember that 2nd day of weight bearing when I pushed it too much and was pretty much down the entire next day. Moderation.

day 45

The first day I could bear weight, I was really careful and everything was fine. Yesterday I probably went 1/2 mile total - two trips outside with the dogs and then just puttering around the house. By evening, my foot was more swollen than it has ever been. The docs had given me some compression socks (and boy, are they ever attractive) and my forefoot was so swollen that there were "fat" rolls where the swelling was pushing out the elastic. I iced, elevated... and finally just gave up and went back to the old standby of lying on my left side with the foot elevated on a body pillow. By this morning it was down about 90%. I planned on taking it easy today only to have the day start off with my dog taking off with a neighbor dog who pretty much just runs all day. I spent an hour out looking for him all the while knowing he could hear me calling and was on ignore. I tried not to put too much weight on the foot. Out of total panic, I finally got in the car and was headed out to look for him - driving with the left foot - when a neighbor signalled that he was returning. I've dug out a long lead line and from now on he's going out on that. I can't be out chasing him all over the neighborhood. So now the foot is swollen again and I'm icing and just keeping it elevated. The dog is happily passed out on the floor as I send him knife-like glances.

All in all, I guess I'm justy glad I am able to have a bit more freedom. It's easier to crutch out in the pastures when I can support part of my weight on my foot. I can go farther. Yes, there is more pain. The plate in my upper foot hurt last night as did the right outside part. The toes are still the worst part, but the pain has definitely been eclipsed by the swelling. That is probably the main issue now - trying to find a balance between pushing things enough to have improvement and keeping the swelling to a manageable level. I can't immerse the foot in water until tomorrow because of the wire holes, but tomorrow I'll try a contrast bath. I'm also hoping to get the hubby to take me to the gym tomorrow as I can now do a stationary bike - I'll also try to get in some weights. Whoo Hoo!

Pain 1 to 3, swelling last night, 5 - this AM, 2 - now, 4.

day 43

I got up this morning and after my first day of PWB, the only part of my foot that hurt was the toes. I actually tend to think that pain was due more to the pins coming out and the semi-aggressive massage the physical therapist and I did yesterday. I've done the range of motion things twice so far today and it can be uncomfortable, but seems to help. I'm figuring out the scar massage thing and am able to identify the parts of the scars that need the most work because they are pretty inflexible. Walking is a bit uncoordinated, but I figure that will get better. It's hard to remember that I can actually put weight on the foot and I find myself hopping around and then, in mid stride remembering and almost tripping because I abruptly try to put the foot down, but my body doesn't quite "get it" in that split second.

I almost took a pain pill this AM for the toes but decided to try Tylenol and it seemed to do the trick. Hopefully that will continue - mainly because I hate pain! I'm going to try to walk to the back side of our pasture today. If I can do that, I can go to the end of our road tomorrow! So silly, this from the woman that walks 2 miles at 6 AM (dark, rain, whatever) every single morning. I guess I need to say "walked." Whatever, my dogs will just be glad I'm going past the deck with them. Last time I tried it my crutch ended up falling through into a mole hole and I almost went over. Hopefully the use of my foot can prevent that this time(:

day 42

Whoo Hoo! Got the pins out and can begin progressive weight bearing while still using crutches. First the pins. He began pulling one out and I got a bit nervous and verbal - no swear words. He stopped and I took a second to think and realized, "Ok, this is how it feels - weird but not really painful - I can deal with this." He pulled them all out and that was that. The pins were about 3 inches long! Yeouch! That's more of a psychological yeouch than a physical one. I thought they would be half that length. They said my X-Rays looked good; I do have a lot of hardware in the poor foot. From there I went to physical therapy and we practiced walking with up to 50% weight, she manipulated the foot, then gave me some exercises and massages to do and sent me on my way. I have the go ahead to do light yard work and ................................WALK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Very exciting. By the end of 6 weeks I should be 100% weight bearing. At that point, I go back for another post op appointment.

I'm a bit nervous about walking for a few reasons. First, it feels awkward since that foot has been so out of commission. Putting it on the ground is a bit scary. Also, so many people have said that when they began weight bearing, the pain came back. I'm low on meds so asked for more. He was reluctant (Damn those people who abuse these things), but did give me a script for enough to see me through. Both the doctor and the physical therapist said that if I get pain, that means I've pushed it too far and to back off. One piece of advice I've gotten from them a few times is that if I wake up in the morning and I am still swollen, it hurts or is not better than whatever it was in the evening, then I've pushed it too far. That makes sense to me and is easy to monitor.

Pain - not up to a 1, but I took two Vicodin before the appointment because I was scared, Swelling - 2 to 3.

day 41

Tomorrow is my 6 week appointment. They will take the pins out of my toes (I'm terrified), X-Ray, give me more physical therapy exercises and ????? - don't know what else. As I've said, I'm hoping to begin weight bearing. That is such a small, unpretentious sentence, but in my head and heart, it is a huge step. I'll be so disappointed if I have to wait one or two weeks, but know that very well could happen. When I broke the foot, I did have to wait two more weeks to bear weight. I just wanted to cry, but didn't. Of course, the bottom line is to do what I have to do to make my foot heal. I'm actually excited to begin the range of motion exercises that I should be ready for because every little step means I'm that much closer to independence again.

Emotionally, things are up and down. Usually I can just kind of disengage my brain and slide through the day without thinking too much, but the last week has been tough. I spend quite a bit of time sitting outside with my two dogs who are used to a very active lifestyle. We have a lot of property, but not a fence that keeps them in. They've learned that it takes me a long time to get them if they decide to do what they want - which usually involves leaving the yard - so they've been pushing it. They took off a couple of times. I know they have probably just gone to the other pastures around us, but there's always the off chance they get into the yard with the mean dog or head out to the road, so I flip out. So after that, I was frustrated with being  useless. That got worse when the Rottie blew his ACL. Aaaarghhhhh!!!! So now he needs surgery. I won't be able to help him at all.  Frustrating! He's supposed to be kept on leash when outside and I can just see me trying to manage that with the crutches. Hopefully I'll be able to at least do 50% weight bearing by then and maybe I can manage it. I was pretty depressed for a few days, what with the dogs and the general frustration of not being able to do anything.  The feeling has passed and I'm back to numbly lazing through the days. It's amazing how little I can do. The scary thing is that being lazy becomes self-fulfilling. Last time I was on the stupid crutches for 8 weeks and I remember once I was given the go ahead to drive and walk, there was this small moment when I just didn't want to do anything, just continue being a slug. I'm recognizing that deadbeat urge rearing its ugly head in me again. Fortunately, I know all it takes is just to force myself back into the world that first time and it just takes off from that point. Can't wait to be there!

day 36

Three steps forward, two steps back. The foot has had swelling issues the past two days. Again, it's the toes that are the most problematic. I get this weird tight feeling on the underside of my foot just where the toes attach to my foot. It feels like someone has pulled fishing line tight at the bottom of each toe. When I feel there, I really can't feel where the toes meet the forefoot because it is too swollen and still probably 50% numb. I'm still at the point that it is a bit of a challenge to clean between the toes. A Q-Tip will barely fit between them with the space between the 3rd and 4th toe being the tightest. It's a bit uncomfortable to do. To combat this returned swelling, I've cut back on most extra exercises, am only doing sets of 20 on the physical therapy, am staying down more and am icing more often. Sigh. Thank god for all my electronic toys, TV and dogs to keep me company.

I've also had a sore back because all I do is lie around and, when I'm up, my body is not at all neutrally aligned. I guess I do remember the same thing when I broke this foot a while back and was non weight-bearing for 6 weeks. It's sad to work so hard to build a stong back only to have it turn to mush when something like this happens. At least I've had enough long-lasting setbacks that I know it's only temporary and things improve quickly once I'm back on my feet again (pun intended).

Yesterday was hot by Seattle standards and I so wanted to plunge into a pool and just lose myself in laps for a good hour. The surgeon said by the time I can swim, I'll be out of this cast so I knew I'd just have to be patient.

It really does help writing all this in a public forum. I'm forced to be as objective as I can and it helps me sort things out in my head. After reading and rereading other blogs, I know my progress is "normal" and I've tried hard to give info that will help others going through this gague their progress too. So it's helpful for me and hopefully for others. I'm starting to ramble, so it's time to sign off.

Pain -  2 with brief shooting 3s, swelling 4

day 34

The foot has basically stabilized with small daily improvements. I can stay up for quite some time - 2 hours or more. It really doesn't hurt from the swelling any more, but I'm not on it all day either. Since I'm still non weightbearing, it's hard to really be up for longer than a few hours - there's just so many things you can do when you rely on crutches. I think I could handle more up time. The foot does turn purple after being up for a while, but it just is not as painful as it was, and I'm grateful for that. I still take Tylenol in the AM, and have been taking a Vicodin in the PM, but am going to try to just do Tylenol tonight. The pain is more of an intermittent dull pain in the places they cut bone, and the toes (which are probably the most painful areas) have shooting, semi-intense pain at times. Overall, pretty manageable.

Other things have gotten better too. For almost 3 weeks or so, the only way I could keep the swelling down was to lie on my left side with the foot higher than the knee which was higher than the hip. That was a hassle! It was really hard to pretty much live on my left side. I can now lie on my back with the foot up and don't have to always have it over my heart either. I've been able to sit outside and read, which is nice because the weather is beautiful right now. I'd actually go weed the yard if I could figure out a reliable way to get up and down on one leg. I'm hoping that once I'm 50% weight bearing that I can do yard work. My husband would welcome the help.

One week from today the toe wires come out! Hooray!!! I'm really hoping I can begin 50% weightbearing then, too. The foot feels so good; hopefully that isn't just teasing me into thinking things are healing faster than they are.

One last thing - my scars are tiny and thin. It surprises me because I've had more surgeries than I'd like to think about and these are the nicest scars I've ever had. I think that in a year, you will barely be able to see them. Too bad they couldn't do that with the ones on my tummy.