The Foot

This is what I have been looking at lately. My foot in a boot and the end of my room. 

Unless I decide to take off the boot and then my foot looks like this.

All of you who know me, know that I have been obsessing about this event for a year. I did not want it to happen but it did.  Let me tell you what I had done. There were three things that he did to my foot.

First thing: bunion fix. I found these cheesy pictures on the internet. It shows you how my toe was bending into my other toe. That became a problem when I was getting blisters on my toes because I was walking on them. The doctor cut a wedge out of the toe bone so my toe would go straight. (ignore the other shaded portion of the picture. My doctor didn't do that part).

 

The only difference is that I have a screw in my toe, like the picture below, instead of a wire (or whatever that thing above is). I guess a screw is more permanent or something. This screw gets to stay in my foot forever.

2nd thing to fix the bunion.  My toe was crooked because the bone attached to it was pushing on it. The picture below shows the bone in my foot sticking way out at an angle. Because of the angle, my joint in the middle of my foot had broken. It was not "jointing" like it was supposed to. My foot did not glide as it is supposed to, it seemed to clomp.
He took that bone and made it go straight by cutting a wedge in it. I drew weird lines on the picture to show you. I don't really know where the wedge is. But I know that it involved getting rid of that joint in between the two lines. He inserted a screw, that will stay there forever, that keeps both bones together. Then he put two screws into my bones, connected to an external "x-fix" to hold them together while they heal.

The screw in my toe will stay there forever but the x-fix will come out.

The third thing he did was fix two of my hammer toes. This was not necessary at this point but since I was going to be recovering, I decided to do it all at once.
 In case you want to know, this is a hammer toe. They were probably caused by my bunion.



The picture below is how they fix a hammer toe. This is just some random picture I found on the internet. It is not exact either. My understanding is that I have screw in my toes not a pin. But I put this picture in so you can see the basic idea. The screws in the hammertoe will come out in 4 months and by then my second joint should be fused. My understanding is that the smaller joint near the end of the toe would not be fused.I have nothing poking out of my toe.

So those are my problems. The plus side? I don't have to use crutches. I have this handy dandy knee scooter to drive around on. It is fantastic. Did I mention that I can not put any pressure on my foot for 2 weeks (or more)? If I had to use crutches I would be miserable. But I just get up and scoot around and get back into bed. No problem-o.  I have to make lots of 17 point turns to get the right angle and I have to arrive at my bed or a chair facing the right way with my left leg near the chair. It can be humorous. 

And I look Sooo cute.

When I take the bandages off this is what I see.

My doctor wants me to take that big toe and do exercises with it. Yes, those are stitches right where he wants me to grab it. He wants to to move it back and forth and push it hard so that it will not fuse with everything else that he does want to fuse. It feels great! The doctor says, "no pain, no gain" - thanks


Warning: gross pictures below. Just skip to the end if you don't want to see.



These are the pictures of my foot while I was at the doctor. So you can see my nifty "x-fix" protruding from my foot. I guess I have stitches from the base of my big toe nail all the way to that last red stripe on my foot near my ankle. I was pretty surprised at how big that x-fix is. Chase says that I am half-robot, half-mom now.

This shows the sausage toes with the stitches in them. I am still swelling a bit.

This shows the top of my toes with the stitches in them. I actually had never seen those until this picture.

This shows the "x-fix" attached to my foot. They do not wash my foot until it heals more because they want to reduce the chance of infection. So that is why my foot is still bloody. (But at this visit they did take those dirty steri-strips off and put clean white ones on)

Chase saw the bottom of my foot and said that it looks like I am a toad.So, now I am a robot toad mom.



This is the gross picture showing the screws that are going into my foot. The doctor can adjust this to make healing faster and better.

Ok, the grossness is over.

Let me tell you a few things that I have been thinking about. 

Before the surgery, I imagined being in a lot of pain. I imagined the medication to keep me sleepy. I imagined being asleep a lot the first week. Well, it has been different then that. The pain medication has been great! It does ache- but I can deal with that. When I look at the pictures I think I should be in a lot of pain. I think because I imagined so much worse- I can deal with this. 

 I was actually wide awake for about 24 hours after the surgery. I heard that the anesthetic will do that to you. Then after that I was pretty normal except that I would take naps at random times. They would not be terribly long naps, but enough.  The problem is that reading tends to make me sleepy so reading is harder then it should be. That is what I want to do a lot of. I should not complain, I have read about 8-9 books. I have also started watching the Gilmore Girls. My mom and sister have watched this and loved it.  I have the whole series to watch so It might take a while.

The boys are all being very sweet about everything. They try to help me whenever they can. Chase is my designated water-getter. Tanner is my go-to man for errands that I need done or to help his little brothers. They all come in and give me hugs.  Chase calls my boot and foot "the surgery". I try to tell him that the surgery is over, now I just have a foot that is getting better. We told the boys all about the surgery and that it would be a very long time until I could do anything. But Chase has no concept of time. About 3 days after the surgery he came in to see me and shockingly, I was still laying in my bed with my foot up. He asked when my surgery was going to be over.  I must add that Andre is awesome. He is doing everything that I usually do and more (he has to be my slave too ya know). He is working and coming home and working again. 

We have had lot of friends and neighbors bring meals and visits and helping with kids. I have wonderful friends who have to drive my kids to their schools all the time. I could not do this without them. If you are reading this- you know who you are- THANKS.  Also my parents are going above and beyond to help us. They are always willing to do whatever whether it is food related, kid related, cleaning my house related, or just keeping me company. It is good to have them here whenever they can.

I still have a long time until my "surgery is over". It will be another week until I go to the doctor again. At that point he will tell me what he wants me to do to start putting pressure on my foot. I figure I will have a week or two of getting my foot used to the pressure. Then I will have 4 more weeks of walking in the boot. I can't remember what he said about getting the x-fix off. I was under the impression that it will be at the 8ish week point. I know I have until 4 months to get the hammertoe screws out. 

The doctor wants me to do exercises with my foot. he wants me to take off the boot and draw the alphabet with my foot. This moves all the bones and muscles and all the stuff. It kind of hurts. I also have toe exercises. The doctor showed me what to do while I was in his office. This is a good thing because he is the "Neal A. Maxwell" of writing directions to toe exercises. Here is what part of it says:

-Move the Proximal Phalanx into extension (upward or dorsal direction).

-Once the "End Range of Motion" is reached, apply very gentle oscillatory pressure to glide the Proximal Phalanx on the Metatarsal in a dorsal direction.

Huh? I had to read it like 5 times. I was hoping the directions would tell me how long to do it or something. It did tell me that I should be able to get it into 60 degree in the dorsal direction and 20 degrees in a "plantar" direction. Should I go and get my protractor?

That is all I can think of for now. I am sure I was going to put something else- but it's late and I am falling asleep- and it is time for some medication!