Nearly 5 months Post-op

Sorry it's been so long since I've written. Life gets busy sometimes, I know you understand.

I'm walking without a boot now. Normal shoes. At times everyone forgets I had surgery, but I'm sorry to say that I haven't. Still having a little pain and I don't have all my strength back just yet.

I wasn't able to jump into therapy when I should have. Money's tight as you all know and bills must be paid. My recovery was probably the last thing that I should have put off.

I've been having some pain on the outside of my foot. Painful enough to cause me to limp a little. So I went to physical therapy. Finally.

The therapist was great, she really took her time and made sure to understand every aspect of the surgery. (Make sure you ask for a licensed therapist!!)

She said the pain I was experiencing was most likely tendinitis -- not a bone injury. Te tendons on the outside of my foot are doing more work than they use too (my pre-surgery foot pointed out to the side a bit.)

So I do my exercises every day, ice my foot (like freezing it) twice a day and stay on a ibuprofen regimen. Over the last week the pain has begun to fade. Cool!

The therapy is all done at home for now. I stretch my calf muscle by sitting on the floor and pulling on my foot with a towel. I also do some strengthening by standing flat footed, slowly rising to my tip toes, then going back down. I repeat this over and over until my leg is tired. I have several other exercises as well.

The only time I really notice a strength issue is when I'm climbing stairs. Most people actually climb stairs on their toes (you'll believe me the next time you try it) and I don't have enough strength in my left foot yet. So when I go up stairs it's kind of a tip toes on the right foot, flat foot on the left. But it will get better soon. I'm very confident.

Baseball season has started for my boys and I was able to play catch with them in the back yard. I can't cut the grass yet, but that's a goal. Weird, I'm excited about cutting grass. What kind of meds did they actually give me?

14 weeks post surgery -- Cheating

I have a confession. I've been cheating.

On my boot that is. A month ago, I was given the go ahead to start putting 25% of my weight back on my foot. It felt great to use it again (still had the dumb crutches though). After two weeks of 25% I was to go up to 50% for two more weeks. I cheated though.

In the third week I was doing more like 75% and in week four I ditched the crutches. It was a little achy, but it sure was nice to get my own cup of coffee again.

About a week ago I went back to the doctor. (I went in with my crutches even though I hadn't used them in over a week.) They said I could try full weight bearing in my boot for 2 days and then try tennis shoes. TENNIS SHOES! I was so excited I almost kissed the nurse.

So, I had already been doing the full weight in the boot for probably 10 days so I rushed home and put on my Nikes. Ah yes, I had forgotten the feeling. I stood up and took a couple of steps.

It hurt.

But I was determined to keep going. Therapy hurts, isn't that what they say? So I tried walking for a few days. The weird thing is that it felt like I was walking on the outside of my foot -- I had walked flat-footed for so long. Seriously, it was a very strange sensation.

Bad news is that the pain became progressively worse and I called the doctor. I'm back in the boot and back down to 50% for a couple weeks again.

Crap.