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.