Avulsion for once

May 7^th to June 4^th

Yes I’m changing the span a little, figure if I make each period appropriate to the time between visits to the clinic I can keep it straighter in my head.

So the next four weeks pretty much fly by. In a nutshell I spend less and less time in the boot and more and more time in my sandals.

When I got leave to go FWB I was spending most of my time in the house wandering around barefoot. I figured that was the easiest thing to do. It was certainly a lot less painful than wearing my runners and it let me start building up the stabilizing muscles around the ankle to help with my balance - always a precarious thing.

Basically I was wearing the boot only for traveling on transit or for navigating foreign terrain. I managed to drive a 6 hour return trip during this time and I went to see Nine Inch Nails on the NIN|JA tour - I couldn’t give up the opportunity to finally see Jane’s Addiction and I’ve only missed one NIN show in the past 10 years (their appearance at the Virgin Festival). It was worth the mild discomfort and walking two kilometers in a crowd of 18,000 people.

I bought new, larger, shoes for work to accommodate my slightly larger right foot - which was larger to begin with. I now have feet two distinct sizes different.

I was in either sandals or runners for doing yardwork and occasionally making a trip to the corner store, about 800m round trip, several times. Being crutch free isn’t quite as entertaining on the subway and people find it much easier to ignore you and not give up their seats, but by this time I was just about sick of that. I welcomed the standing and used it for all it was worth to build up my strength. Getting the muscles to profile better, making them stronger, seemed to go a long way to getting the swelling as much under control as could be expected.

I attempted to be as cautious as possible when out in unfamiliar terrain but I was pretty arrogant in familiar areas - luckily it didn’t cost me anything.

There really wasn’t much to tell other than I went through a gradual withdrawal from the boot up to my sixth appointment. I was getting a little anxious though. My surgeon had that habit of looking at me and saying “How old are you? Lets just leave it for another week.” I wanted to be free of the boot for my birthday and barring that I wanted to be free from the boot when I went to a conference in August in Indianapolis. That was my worry, that I wouldn’t be in shape enough by mid-August that I could spend 8 hours a day wandering through exhibit halls or visiting areas of Indy.

I didn’t have to worry though. I saw the surgeon for nearly 3 minutes. He looked as the x-rays, glanced at my scar, felt the profile of the tendon, asked about pain and then told me I was good to go to two shoes.

I was a little numb, I was thinking he would say something about going gradual or something but when asked he simply said if I needed to rest the foot just to put the boot back on if I felt the need - not that I couldn’t have thought of that myself but I’m glad he told me. I asked about cycling and he looked at me as if I were crazy. I qualified my request by saying that I’d only be riding the stationary and I’d start out as easy as I could, he was reluctant but he did agree.

Of course he didn’t know that my stationary bike is a Kinetic trainer built to mimic road riding as closely as an oil based trainer can and that my lowest gear I actually planned on riding was 80 inches. Still I got the go ahead and I nearly pulled the second shoe out of my backpack at that very moment. Instead I waited until I got to the office with my next appointment not until September.