Day 21 & on the road to recovery

Day 21 & back in the gym…….thank our dear lord.  Of course, no cardio, but it does feel amazing to be back and active.  It looks like I will be on short term disability for a total of seven weeks.  My company has been fully supportive of my recovery and for this ~ I’m truly humbled.   My official physical therapy starts next Monday and should continue 3-4x a week until I regain fully functionality of my foot. 

Here is the boot my orthopedic surgeon sent me home in. 

Here is my incision and it is healing nicely!

As far as range of motion……..  I believe I have 15% total range of motion in my right foot.  Range of motion by my definition: ability to point foot down, pull foot all the way up and turn my foot out to the side.  This is amazing considering my cast was removed six days ago.

 I can take the boot off if Im stationary, showering & sleeping.  Oh the joy of sleeping on my stomach!  Also, I realize just how much I was compensating for the instability in my ankle.  I don’t have the ankle  pain I had in the past from the instability, but I am having heel pain.  Is it the boot? trauma from three surgeries in eight months? ………who knows ~ but I will overcome this and make a full recovery!

Day 15, stitches out! weight bearing & HOME!

Day 15!  Today is the day.  I arrived at the surgeon’s office first thing in the am.  They removed all of my 20+ stitches which brought on a nice wave of nausea.  The incision is healing nicely.  They applied several butterfly sutures, put on a large CAM boot, ordered me to start weight bearing and GO HOME!

As much as I loved the past two weeks in NYC, I’m ready to be in our home, see our family and friends, snuggle with my dogs and return to our normal life.  The weight bearing process is pretty uncomfortable.  I decided to wait until I was home to start my weight bearing road to recovery.  I haven’t used my knee wheeler since I walked in the door!  I have significant heel pain when I walk, but it is something I will work thru!



Cast #3 Day 12 Post Surgery

As you can see, my incsion is healing nicely.  Ive been non weight bearing since the surgery and my knee wheeler was worth its weight in gold!  The reason my surgeon keep changing my cast is due to the prior staph infection.  After everything looked unremarkable, he then put on the "mother load" cast.  I honestly wondered if I was going to be able to pull my jean shorts over the ginormous cast.

Thank you to my wonderful friends daughters, they made my cast much more fun to look at......

New Cast

After seeing my incision for the first time, it was time to pick a color for my cast.  My son wanted me to selected Blue & Gold - but that was not an option.  Here is my cast for the next ten days

Surgery Photo

Here is the photo

As you can see, the brevis tendon is fully intact with no splits, tears and appears to be healthy. This should have two tendons and I only have one.  What you see just below the brevis is one end of the long tendon fully retracted in the cuboid tunnel which was causing significant discomfort.  He was able to pull the retracted long tendon out of the cuboid tunnel, cut the frayed portoin and secured it to the brevis





Day Five ~ Post surgery update

Hello All!

Today is day five since my peroneal tendon repair on Monday and I'm doing very well.  Yesterday was my first follow up appointment with my surgeon and the first time I was able to see the incision. When they removed the cast, we were all relieved to see that there was little to no swelling and the incision is starting to heal. 

The surgeon told me he was able to clean out a large amount of scar tissue and successfully secured the peroneal long tendon to the brevis tendon.  He asked if I wanted to see a photo.  Why did he take a photo?  Because this is a very rare injury and my case may be able to help others in the future.  I'll  post the photo in the next blog

Day Two ~ Post Surgery

We were told that my nerve block would last 6-12 hours with a maximum of 24.  My nerve block lasted over 31 HOURS!!!!!  What a blessing!  Though when the block wore off ~ HOLY MOLY!  That pain was intense!  It hasnt been easy not being able to put weight on that foot, but this is all a part of the recovery process.  My family will leave tomorrow and I have a good friend coming in to stay with me for the weekend.  Ill backdate all of my history when Im alone tomorrow