Surgery Saga

Since sometime last fall I was bothered by a painful bump on the back of my heel, that made it hard for me to do much walking of any distance. I also was only able to wear shoes without a back.  I wish that I had bought stock in the Easy Spirit company, because I have many pairs of their shoes!  I saw a podiatrist in March, after deciding that my approach (of ignoring it and hoping it would go away) was not working. He gave me inserts for my shoes and prescribed physical therapy, which gave some relief, but did not completely take care of the problem. So after dealing with more painful walking, I decided to go back to see what the next recommendation would be.  He ordered an MRI, which is something I had dreaded and hoped to avoid for my whole life.  Since only my left leg had to go into the machine, it was not as bad as I was expecting.  Anyway, after seeing the results of that, the Dr. said that the only way to really take care of this problem would be surgery to remove the bone spur on the back of my heel bone. The surgery also involved repair of the Achilles tendon (technical term is debridement) because the bone spur had irritated it so much that it was "a mess" to quote the Dr.

So I had to decide if I wanted to just deal with this thing, or if I wanted to go through the surgery.  And if so, when to do it.  I had to do it either fairly soon (by this time it was late July/early August or wait until after we came back from our California trip in January. I decided that I did not want to just deal with the pain, and then decided to do the surgery sooner, rather than later.  The earliest date I could get was August 25, so that was what we went with.

The surgery was day surgery---in to the hospital at about 7 a.m., surgery at 9 or 9:30, and home again by about 4 p.m. And this is what my leg looked like after the surgery.

I had that bandage for the first two weeks, and during that time I could not put any weight on that foot at all.  That made moving around quite difficult and made for some creative ways of doing things---like even getting into the house. Obviously I didn't leave the house, except for Dr. appointments.  And during that time, this thing was my best friend. (Well, besides my wonderful care-giver, who waited on me hand and foot. :)

I got pretty good at scooting around on that thing, and continued to use it for a while after I graduated from the bandage to the boot. Some things were a bit tricky, like making sharp turns, as this video shows. And if this video actually shows up here, AND plays, it will be a major accomplishment for me.  Definitely a first!!!

 After two weeks the bandage came off, the stitches (staples, acatually) came out, and I graduated to the very stylish boot.  The picture doesn't show it, but when I first got it, it had about a four-inch wedge under the heel. That made for awkward walking, with one foot flat and the other with a four inch wedge.  Each week that wedge was lowered a bit, until after 4 weeks the boot was flat.

 Once I was walking with the boot, I also graduated from the scooter to just a regular old-person type walker. I still used the scooter at first when I left the house, but used the walker at home.

Once the boot was at the lowest level, I was also ready to start physical therapy. After about 2 weeks of therapy, I was ready to graduate into a shoe---but only for a couple hours a day.  That was gradually increased for 1-2 weeks until I could start wearing shoes pretty much all day. But if I was going to do a lot of walking (like for grocery shopping) I had to wear the boot.

I never thought I could be so excited about wearing a pair of tennis shoes!! Once I was wearing shoes, I could also drive again!!! Yippee!!!

During my recuperation I read lots of books, watched way too much TV (HGTV was another good friend), played games and did puzzles on the iPad, and when the weather was nice I sat out on the front porch.  That way I didn't feel like I was totally missing out on the beautiful fall weather.

So now it's been a little over 14 weeks since surgery, I am wearing shoes all the time and am pretty much resuming all normal activities.  I still am not able to do a great deal of walking--if I'm on the foot too much, it starts to hurt and also starts to swell a bit, and then I know I have to ice it and elevate it for a while.  And I  have my exercises that I have to continue to do to stretch the Achilles tendon and strengthen the ankle, etc. It's not anywhere near to being 100%, but I've been told that can take up to a year.  I do see improvement---not so much day-to-day, but week-to-week, so that is encouraging, I guess.

So.....that is way more medical stuff than anyone wants to read, but it will help me to remember just how this whole process went and how long it all took.

No more medical stuff in the next post.  I promise!