2+ Year Update!

Hey everyone, I’ve gotten a lot of requests for some updates on what is going on in my crazy foot world 🙂

Well, its been a little over two years now. All is well! My foot is still doing great – no pain. I know I am supposed to be wearing my orthotics all the time, but I don’t. Mainly because they don’t fit in my dress shoes for work. I do keep them in my tennis shoes though.

Things that are different for me now – I always wear house shoes/slippers when I am at home. Sometimes if I go barefoot for a long time at home (I have hard floors – no carpet) , I will have a crampy feeling in my foot where the bone was removed. After I put some slippers on though, it feels fine. This is something I have just accepted, it doesn’t bother me, I just know I’ll always have to wear some sort of shoe around the house!

I don’t wear heels. Now, before I had the surgery, I seldom wore heels anyways – because I’m tall. And why wear heels and be uncomfortable when I can wear flats and be comfy?? I have worn heels for a few hours at a time. For weddings and other events. Mainly I try to get heels that have a strap coming around my ankle, so I don’t have use my toes to try to hold the shoe on. I have a narrow heel so many of the heels slide off of my foot.

Every once in a while I will feel a dull ache in my foot. It doesn’t bother me, I think of it more as a reminder – watch your foot, Kim…. a dull ache is NOTHING compared to what I went through before. I can’t pull my big toe back far without it being uncomfortable, but I haven’t found a good reason to do that anyways-  except to just see if I can. Maybe if someone is out there doing yoga??? (I am no good at Yoga though…)

Overall – I am still a success story. I am GLAD I had the surgery. I can function normally now. I run, swim, walk, jog, do jumping jacks, anything I want to do. No issues here – I’m a happy girl!!!

A couple people asked about the big toe moving in or out, and fusing bones together. There was no discussions of fusing bones, my surgery was simple – just removal and that was it! I’m happy to report that big toe is still in the exact same place it has always been, so far – no danger of a weird big toe 🙂

3 Months Later…

Alright so, Obviously I slacked a bit on updating everyone on my foot. Its been 3 months and a week or so since my surgery (was on Feb 25th 2011). I feel like I’m almost completely back to normal and its great. Here are some things that I’ve been doing over the past two months.

I was getting ready for a vacation (a cruise!) in mid-May, so I started riding an exercise bike. I hadn’t been completely cleared yet to do everything so I thought that would be a great low-impact workout. I started riding on April 1, until my doctor appointment on April 19th. At that appointment the doc told me that my scar looked exactly like he wanted it to. You can barely see it now. In fact, here is a picture I just took!

A photo from today, you can hardly see the scar. 6/5/11

It looks great to me! Anyways, My big toe joint was very stiff. It was bothering me some. Of course I think I was having recurring nightmares that the pain from before surgery would come back. He told me my joint would be stiff for a while and told me to just try to stretch it out, so thats just what I did. I was not allowed to wear my orthotics though for another month, but I am supposed to wear those pretty much all the time going forward.  He also said “you can do whatever you want now”. Great!! I had told him I definately wanted to be able to jog again, it was a goal of mine. So.. that week I started back at the gym.

 

There is an indoor track at my gym, so every day I would walk a couple times around the track focusing on walking correctly and stretching that joint. It had been so long since I could walk normally this was very hard for me. I had gotten used to walking on the outside of my foot. After walking I would use the elliptical machine for cardio and then weights following, and end with more laps around the track. Eventually the walking got easier and easier.

 

I went on my cruise and even wore flip flops for the first time in who knows how long! I know I know.. I probably said I would never wear them again, but its really hard to go to the pool and not wear them. Also, I had the surgery so I could be NORMAL again! So.. I got some nice memory foam flip flops that are real nice on the foot! Anyways, my foot did great on the cruise, I wasn’t in pain except if I was on it all day, it would still swell up. Still had a case of the sausage foot at the end of most days, but nothing like the pain I had before the surgery. I was very pleased on how well it did on the vacation which was 8 days long!

 

Back to now… I have made TONS of progress since the cruise. A week after, I was able to stand almost on a full tippy-toe on my foot. This may sound stupid, but if you went through all this, you would know thats a breakthrough! So, I decided I would try to jog, and finally, I was able to jog a little! I didn’t want to push it so I would run 1/4 of the track and then walk the rest and repeat. However, last week I decided it was time, so I put Eye of the Tiger on the old ipod shuffle and was off! Proudest moment ever. After all the hard work, I ran over a mile last Tuesday! I took off Wednesday – but only because I was so sore from not running in well over a year, haha – but ran again on Thursday. It felt great!

 

So… what I’m getting at is. Do I think other people should have this surgery? ABSOLUTELY! If you are in any pain like I was before, which was constant, and throbbing, then go for it! It’s still getting better and I realize that, but when I was able to jog at the gym for the first time since January of 2009- thats HUGE! The surgery and recovery is hard, but it was so very worth it in the end! Please post any comments with specific questions and I’d be glad to help. I know I slacked off on my updates, but really, its because I’m out living my life instead of sitting home babysitting a hurt foot!

 

Until next time….

Day 24: A Future Pirate

PICTURES!!! Yeah! First off here are my cute crutch covers. They suck.

I’ve already put the ones we bought at Walgreens that are not cute at all, however, they are nicely padded. These pink & black ones may be cute, but that is all that they are. I might burn them along with the crutches once I’m all done with this stuff.

So, I only have two days left on the crutches I think. My doctor appointment is on Tuesday and he told me to bring those tennis shoes! So I’m so excited about the thought of not having to use these things. I am way irritated with them and hope I never ever have to use them again once this is all over. I can walk on my foot a lot better now, I can tell its healing, thank goodness. It was even a little itchy this morning, which is how all cuts usually feel when they are heeling so I took that as a good sign.

I did take off the dressing and decide to take a shower the other day. It was an absolutely horrible crap experience! I got all ready – took the bandage off – had the shower water running, got ready to get in and realized…. I can’t stand up on this foot, so how in the world am I going to take a shower????? Well after about 5 minutes of brainstorming, I started crying (shocked?) and ended up taking a bath and washing my hair in the sink as I have been. So, the whole shower thing was a huge letdown. That’s what I’ve been doing. I just don’t feel comfortable standing on that incision. GROSS. It just grosses me out thinking that its going to get all dirty. Which brings me to….

23 days in…the Incision

There it is! My foot… that is yesterday morning, before the shower incident, so it was the first time that I took all the stuff off of it and saw it post-stitches. I think its pretty nasty looking. There was some blood on the bandages, which I’m hoping was just from when he had taken out the stitches. It does make me a little sick to my stomach that I can see the exact line where he cut the foot open. Hope it doesn’t gross anyone out too much!

 

I am walking around more and more on the foot. It’s very awkward though, my left leg stays straight and I take very small steps with it. Much like a Pirate with a wooden peg for a leg. Which is why I imagine I will be a full blown Pirate once I get off of the crutches on Tuesday. My only hope is that once the crazy slanted boot is gone that I will be able to walk like a semi-normal human. We’ll see. For now, my husband tells me the way I walk is highly unattractive. But, I don’t really care because it’s better than crutches!!!

2 Weeks and Hopeless

Here’s something I learned today. It may not “hurt” to have stitches removed, but it sure is highly uncomfortable. I wouldn’t say that it hurt, but it did “hurt a little”. Dr. C told me it would.. and I believed him, If I remember correctly his words were  (after” it’ll hurt a little” ) something along the lines of – it’s definitely rough to have stitches removed on the bottom of your foot! I made it through, I didn’t even cry, but Dr. C is awesome and he took them out  gently and made sure I was doing okay. I told him about my problems walking on my foot, he basically said I could walk on it, or not walk on it, whatever I wanted to do. So apparently it’s not important that I walk on it now!  My foot is now bruised all in the middle of my foot and my second toe some. And this really sucks, but I didn’t get to take a picture of my foot before we wrapped it back up.. Sorry! I was busy asking questions and stuff so I didn’t get to. Oh, he did tell me to bring my tennis shoes with me to my next appointment.

Then the bad news all comes. So much for thinking I could take a shower. Dumpster foot remains. Still can’t get it wet for a few more days. He said I could take the dressing off in a couple of days and then get it wet. On crutches for another week and a half. You couldn’t have told me worse news. Enter the hopeless feeling……

Warning: For the remainder of this post I’m going to be very Negative Nancy-like.

I just don’t know how much more of this I can take. Its driving me crazy. I can’t do anything myself. I sit at my desk ALL DAY LONG just wishing I could get up and walk around, but I can’t. I just have to sit there. For whatever reason when I went to the doctor today I thought when I got the stitches out everything would get a little better, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to walk on it as much with the stitches gone, but I was way wrong. Hurts the same. I thought I’d be able to take a shower tonight, nope I had to wash my hair in the kitchen sink again, and take another bath. I think I cried the entire time though the bath. It’s just so depressing. I know it’s my fault going into the appointment today thinking that things would be better on the other end, then it not happening but I guess I was just trying to remain positive.

I’m not trying to make anyone feel sorry for me, so please don’t. I’m just expressing what an emotional wreck this whole thing has made me. I don’t think its just the surgery that’s making me feel this way, I think its more of the fact that I’ve been dealing with the pain and limitations from my foot for over a year and a half now. I can’t tell you the last time I jogged, or walked without pain, and now I can’t even get myself a glass of water. I know that its going to get better, but it’s still hard to see the light.

All I can say is thank goodness after tomorrow its the weekend. I don’t know if I could handle another day this week of trying to walk down the tunnels to get to my building. I really do hope I’m in better spirits by my next post because I don’t like to be this negative. Did I mention its been 2 weeks since the surgery?

The Surgery

So, my surgery was originally scheduled for February 18th, but I ended up getting the flu. Luckily they let me reschedule for Friday the 25th. I was so excited for my surgery.. which I know sounds incredibly weird but when you have been in pain for as long as I have, surgery sounds very intriguing.

Here’s the symptoms I had been dealing with. For the most part, there was a chronic pain in the ball of my left foot. I could not walk barefoot on a hard floor, always had to keep house shoes on. Before I was put in the boot, it would throb in the evenings when laying in bed, just an all over ache throughout the ball of my foot, and even in my arch.

You can tell from the pic above that my left foot is swollen in comparison to the right foot. This was actually taken some time after I got my boot taken off my foot! (Note – my left foot is also the same foot that I fell and tore my ligament on, so my big toe nail is still black from that, sorry! You were warned I am a clutz!) . When I would wear my tennis shoes with my orthotics in, the pain would be at its lowest. In general I would be pain free unless I was on the foot for hours, but the moment I took them off and put my foot down on the ground, I was in pain again!

Back to the surgery – I had to arrive at 11:30am, for my 12:30pm surgery. It was done at a surgicare location, everyone was extremely nice there! I couldn’t eat or drink after midnight, so you bet that I stayed up and chugged some water at 11:59pm!!! I was starving all morning but made it, once I got there, they brought me back, had to go over my clinical history again (I had previously submitted it online) and sign it. They asked a few questions, then took me to my bed to get me ready for surgery.

I had to change into a gown, but they had lots of warm blankets to keep me comfy!  They put the heart monitors on my chest, and then the anesthesiologist came in to go over everything with me. The other nurse put my IV in while I was talking to him.. their way of distracting me ( I didn’t even cry, and I’m terrified of needles!). For my surgery it would be “monitored anesthesia”. They explained to me basically they would put me to sleep while Dr. Capece did the injections to numb my foot, then they would let me wake up a bit more. They would monitor me the whole time, and if they needed, they would help me breath through a breathing tube (that was the only difference between my sedation and general anesthesia). Everything went fine though, and they only did the sedation.

Everyone that came to talk to me asked me to tell them what they were doing to me today so I must have said 15 times “Removing a sesamoid bone from my left foot”. Finally Dr. Capece came in before the surgery and marked my left foot also. Hey, at least we knew we had the right foot! When it was time for the surgery, the nurse put in my “margarita” medicine, in which I already felt like I was drunk at this point because I didn’t have on my glasses and they were rolling me through the place. They brought me into the operating room, and I was feeling loopy – I had to scoot over to the other bed. Things slowly blurred out, I was chatting with the nurses and Dr. Capece, and the next thing you knew, they were saying “Hi Kim, we’re finished”. I remember Dr. Capece was telling the nurses that he had ran a marathon.. and I asked him jokingly when I could run a marathon, and they all got a kick out of that.

I was brought back into the recovery room, where they just were making sure everything was okay. I was pretty awake and felt fine. I couldn’t feel any pain in my foot. They fit me for a little shoe thing to wear when I was moving around – just for extra protection. That was pretty much it. My husband talked to Dr. Capece, he said that everything went fine, the bone was irregular shaped.. it had tried to heal and fused back irregularly. They sent it to pathology. He also told him not to let me move my toes, or anything pretty much until I came back in. My first post-op appointment is on Tuesday, March 1. Looking forward to it!!!!