July 30, 2014

Getting psyched for the next surgery.  My left foot hasn't completely healed and I can't walk on it normally yet. 

I told my doctor that it felt like I was 'walking on my bones'.  The outside and inside bones on the ball of my foot bear most of the weight and while it's not really painful, it is uncomfortable.  He has the nurse cut a pad that fits in the middle of the ball of my foot, which helps, but doesn't totally solve the problem.  I'm concerned that I will never walk normally again. 

My balance is badly off and I got a pair of crutches because I know I won't be walking well at all after the other foot is done.  I feel like a toddler, learning to walk again.  People probably think I'm drunk, watching me try to buy groceries.

Overall, my left foot hasn't regained full flexibility, but the doctor assures me that my rate of healing is well beyond what most people experience.  I attribute that to my refusal to lay down and cry.  I've been doing stretching exercises to keep the scar tissue from limiting my movement.  The doctor showed me how to have someone pull on my toe to help break up scar tissue.  The first time he pulled my toe, it was the most painful thing,  I though he was pulling it off.  But afterward, my toe actually felt looser and less swollen.  Weird. 

July 25, 2014

Well, well, well.  Just a few months into the job, and I have once again worked myself OUT of a job.  The work they thought would take 8 months, I have completed in 2.  Being good at your job has its drawbacks.

After some wrangling, my company is going to put me on furlough so I can draw unemployment and get my other bunion taken care of.  My second surgery is scheduled for August 1st.

June 30, 2014

After a full week of trying to get my employer to cooperate, I got a doctor's release signed and I'm able to go back to work.  I'm not walking well or very fast, but I'm at work and I have something to take my mind off my foot. 

Stitches come out this afternoon.  At least my foot doesn't feel like it's going to explode any more. 

June 24, 2014

I naively thought I would be able to go back to work today.  I went, but work wouldn't let me in. 

"It's a liability" they said.  How would they evacuate me if there was an emergency?  The answer to that is simple:  They wouldn't.  With or without a bum foot, they wouldn't evacuate me.  So that was just an excuse.  An excuse for what, I can't say.  There was one other guy in my office on crutches and they let him work. 

Idiots.

June 23, 2014

Today I get to see the results of having my foot sliced, diced and bound. 

The doctor said he had some trouble with this foot, and the top of my foot from the toenail to the bottom of the incision is completely numb.  Since I still have feeling on the pad of my toe and between my toes, the doctor said I should get all of the feeling back eventually.  Nerves take a while to heal. 

The purple lines are marks to line up the skin when he stitched it shut.  There is a lot of bruising farther back towards my heel but it doesn't hurt. 

The hardest thing to get used to is feeling my toes actually rub against each other as much as they now do. 

And the exploding foot thing.  That still hurts a lot.

June 21, 2014

Nobody told me about the exploding foot.  I learned about that one by looking it up online. 

After the nerve block wore off, I was obliged to feel everything in spite of heavy doses of vicodin.  Going to the bathroom was torture, and the one thing I simply couldn't put off for long.  In fact, anything that required my foot to be lower than my head was torture.

Apparently all the blood rushing from my reclining body to my injured foot was the cause of excruciating pain.  My foot throbbed as if it were literally about to explode.

The only option was to stay on the couch, foot in the air, heavily drugged.

June 20, 2014

For the previous 3 days, I scrubbed my bunioned left foot with a sanitizing soap they gave me at the doctor's office.  I showed up at the surgery center in Billings on Friday morning, with my loosest yoga pants, surgical boot and a bad case of nerves. 

A very nice surgical nurse guided me to the pre-op room where I changed into a gown.  They questioned me to make sure they were doing the right procedure and that I understood what would be done.  My left foot (the worst one) was washed in iodine and wrapped in a sterile towel.  The doctor had recommended that we do one foot at a time so I could still get around.  An IV was inserted into the back of my hand (painlessly for once) and off we went to surgery. 

The anesthesiologist told me she was going to inject a drug into my IV to make me sleep.  There have been a few surgeries in my life and I always do the same thing:  try to fight the drugs as long as possible.  I think my personal record is about 3 seconds. 

It was over 2 hours later when I awoke in the recovery room.  My post-op nurse asked me how I was doing.   He also said they gave me some Demerol (wow, my drug of choice!  Bonus!) and that I would be groggy for a while.  He wasn't exaggerating.  I was out for most of the day.  Somehow I got dressed and my Significant Other got me to the car and home. 

My foot was wrapped in a thick layer of gauze with an ace bandage around that.  A dark spot on the gauze showed where some blood was seeping through.  But other than that, my foot was as numb as a tree stump.  The doctor had used a nerve block which he said would wear off after about 24 hours. 

The rest of the day was spent flat on my back, on the couch, foot on the back of the couch, icebag on the foot. 

Bunion #1 was gone.  Using a marker, I drew a line around the dark spot on the gauze to see if it was growing.