7 Weeks Post-Op ... depressed

It's been a while since I've been into the doctor's office. My mother-in-law passed away the week of Christmas and my appointments were postponed. I should have been in for a follow up 2 weeks ago, but things haven't worked out.

It's been icy this winter. I've stayed home when it's been bad. I'm lucky that I can do some work from home. I tried to go into work once, but had a bad slip on the ice and put all my weight on my left (healing) foot. It's a strange feeling. My whole leg stiffened involuntarily before I fell on it. I suppose to protect itself. It ached afterwords, but I am sure I haven't done any damage. I have fallen this way twice now. Once on the ice, and once in my kitchen on a stray paper towel. You can never be too careful.

I'm writing tonight because I cannot sleep and just had a bad run of diarrhea. I stopped taking Vicadin two days ago and have just been taking Tylenol. I can't help but think that some of my symptoms are mild withdrawal symptoms. I have been taking Vicadin steadily for over a month.

Pain comes and goes. I mostly feel pain on my commute back and forth to work. I'm in the car for about 50 minutes in the morning and about an hour in the evening. My foot is down the whole time. The bumps in the road and the mild rocking back and forth causes some bone discomfort. The nerve pain mostly occurs at night when my foot has been in the same position for a while.

I keep my foot up whenever I can. It's still the best pain relief. But I am restless. Depression has really been a big struggle. We have three children; all boys. During the holidays, the funeral and preparations, my wife still had to take care of us all. I had very little to offer in the way of help. It really stinks to be layed up like this. Was it worth it? Time will only tell.

I'm still wearing the boot and I'm still on crutches. I hate the boot. I'm sure anyone who has worn the boot also hates the boot. I'll sign this post off with a photo of my least favorite friend...the boot, and a Christmas Tree.

Scar Tissue Nerve Hypersensitivity

I'm four weeks post surgery now. I went to the doctor today because I'm still having some bleeding and have been having some pain.

The pain I'm having is right at my incision points. The pain can be severe sometimes, and I liken it to a red hot poker or a red hot iron being pressed into the skin.

The burning pain is actually common. It's from scar tissue nerve hypersensitivity. Here's what happens:

When the skin is cut, especially deeply as in surgery, the nerves that cross the incision are severed. As they heal, new nerve endings are created. These nerve endings have never experienced the world before so anything touching them; a sock, cast, boot etc. causes them to go off like fireworks. And it hurts.

The fix is to take vitamin E oil and rub it into the scar – rub it HARD. And this, of course, hurts like heck. But the idea is to desensitize the area.

I'll let you know how it goes in a couple of weeks.

A little update:
The vitamin E oil treatment works. The oil doesn't actually help from a medicinal point of view — it's really just a lubricant. But it does make the scar look a ton healthier. I'm at eight weeks now and occasionally the scar on the top of my foot will ache. If I rub it, the pain goes away. Sweet.