The Big Day, Part Two

The ride home in the car wasn’t too fun but I was still a bit out of it. Arriving at the house and trying crutches for the first time ever across the front yard was scary; and neither of us was prepared for the front porch steps… by the time we got in the door I sacked out in the nearest easy chair. I was under strict instruction of no weight bearing on the right leg whatsoever for 48 hours; especially due to the “paralysis” from the nerve block shot. After we got settled I drank a ton of water and had lunch and a nap. I was surprisingly well energized in the afternoon and now can’t remember a thing I did but maybe catch up on some TV. My first attempt at maneuvering to the bathroom was awkward as it's three stairs down; it was exhausting getting there and back. My balance was WAY off and not feeling/using my right leg was pretty weird.

Warning, gory stuff ahead
Late afternoon my doctor called and checked in on me, and repeated what I guess he told me after surgery that I completely did not remember: there was extensive degenerative damage including loose bone fragments in the joint, what little cartilage was left he had to "re-mold" to fill the joint, and a lot of grinding had worn away the bones. He had to sand and reshape them and shorten the first metatarsal bone by a few mm as it was too long (in relation to the other metatarsals), which was one of the things that got me here in the first place. He did not have to use the "Hemi Implant" that we were prepared to do if necessary. I thought it was very cool of the doc to call. He parted with one request – that I start manual rotation of the big toe on Day Two. I’m terrified.

After dozing off again and being well underway on my antibiotic and pain meds by prime time, my ankle jumped a few times – I thought it was one of the cats tugging on my Smurf bootie, but apparently it was an involuntary muscle spasm as the nerve block started wearing off from the top down. I’d had an itch on my knee a bit earlier as a signal that it was on its way.

Getting up to bed was an embarrassing exercise in “reverse seated crab” up the stairs at the doc’s suggestion, which was so much easier than struggling with the wretched crutches and breaking my neck. I started my work on perfecting the “flamingo pose” perched on my left leg and bending my right as I brushed my teeth (aaah…) and C. helped me hop to bed. Another tip I used from the doc was to put an enclosure around my foot – he had suggested a box or basket of some kind to avoid the foot getting tangled in the bedding, but more so as a defensive measure against curious kitties. I had an empty office file box that I slid the elevation pillow into and was protected (and the cat, of course, slept on top of the box). I got very little sleep and around 1:30am could voluntarily move my ankle, which was nice and a little freaky. Around 3am I could feel E V E R Y T H I N G. Ouch. I’d heard a lot of advice/suggestion to really stay up on the pain meds, as in, take them at 3.5 hours instead of 4 hours as directed when the pain has already crept in. Having employed this approach in a previous accident I knew it was good advice. My toe started twitching, which was not my favorite thing. I found that playing “Bejeweled” on the iPhone is an excellent pain distraction. I didn’t get much sleep, but little bits here and there. But I got a high score! The pain was definitely coming on. I hated waking C. up to get me some more water/ice to help offset it.

I started this blog not just because I’ve needed a topic to get myself rolling in the blogger arena, but also because in searching for info about this kind of procedure and more importantly recovery from it, I found little to no info. I only came across angry posts about the prolonged pain, where others said they were good as new, but no one talked about the process. So if this helps anyone, great. If it provides some entertainment/info for my family and friends, excellent. If it bores you to tears and acts as a sleep aid for you, that’s OK by me too. Cheers!