Day 13: First Post-Op Appointment w/ new foot pictures!

January 28th has been on my calendar for quite a while.   It was something I looked forward to because I knew that my first post-op appointment would be my first major step in the direction of progress.

All Sunday night I anxiously tossed and turned in my bed and imagined what the appointment would be like.  I also searched for as many images of cool colored casts I could find because of course I was excited by the idea of designing a hard cast.

The appointment...

First, I was 15 mins early, and did not get called back until an hour after my original appointment time.  By that point, with the car trip included, my foot had spent over 2 hours not elevated.  Any time my ankle is not elevated, my ankle starts throbbing on cue.  When I finally got called back, a student, not sure what kind, unwrapped my surgical bandage.  I am a major supporter of education, but considering the extent of the surgery I had and how much pain I have been under since the surgery, I certainly expected an expert to be unwrapping it. To the student's credit, she was very careful with unwrapping and it didn't hurt as much as I expected.

Here is the progression:

Here we go...5 incisions, 4 closed with stitches, 1 closed with staples.

My surgeon's initials, still on my surgery leg.

What is left of my calf muscle...

After the stitches and staples were painfully removed, steri-strips were placed to keep the incisions in place.  Surprisingly enough, the incisions were mostly healed already.

Next up, x-rays.  It was so painful to hold my foot in the proper positions for them to take the images.

Pre- foot:

Notice how flat my foot is.

Post-foot:

Notice the nice triangle shape in my arch area. Also notice the line where they cut my heel bone and shifted it, and where they wedged the extra bone in. Both screws are in my calcaneus, so eventually the bone will reform into one piece again.  The screws are there for life.  Neither one of the screws cross over a joint, so my foot will be free-moving once it heals.

Pre- foot:

Notice how my foot is curved in the arch area towards the inside and how the talus bone is creeping out of alignment with the navicular.

Post-foot:

Notice how my calcaneus was cut on the lateral side and how they wedged a bone in and used a screw to secure it.  Also notice how straight my foot is, with the talus happily tucked into the groove of the navicular bone.

After x-rays, I was off to the cast room.  I was anxiously awaiting my color choice.  And then...my world stopped for a moment.  I asked the technician what my color choices were.  He replied with, "We don't have any colors."  Only white...ONLY WHITE!!!!  With a surgery like mine, there isn't much that you get to look forward to.  Having the coolest cast ever was high on my silver lining list.  With the stress of the appointment so far, I just lost it.  Tears started rolling down my face.

So there it is...my ugly white cast.

As soon as I got out of my appointment, I continued my struggle with the durable medical equipment company to get a wheelchair.  Luckily, around 5 pm that afternoon, I finally got a lightweight wheelchair and a 3 in 1 toilet delivered to my apartment.

My life has been exponentially easier since the arrival of these two items.