Week 6 - In a walking cast (Sort of) January 12, 2009
Posted by neteng in Uncategorized.trackback
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- Walking Cast with boot
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- Walking Cast Close-Up of Heel
I had my six week appointment today 1/12/09. I had been in my 2nd cast for the past 4 weeks with my foot in equinus position (pointing down at about 45 degrees). My surgeon mentioned at my 2 week visit that he would be putting me into a walking cast at my 6 weeks post-op appointment.
I had my cast removed and the physican assistant walked away with the following instructions ”work on getting your foot in neutral position.” He didn’t give me any suggestions how I might best do this as I have had my foot in the same position basically since surgery. As I sat on the exam room bed I tried to lift my foot up to neutral position. No surprise, this didn’t result in much.
My ortho returned and told the assistant to make me a fiberglass walking cast. He also told me that in three weeks he would like to put me in shoes with “heel lifts.” He gave me the name of a local shoe repair shop that would attach lifts to my shoes. Our insurance won’t cover this I found out, but my wife thought it would be a good idea to get two shoes setup with lifts. One work (dress shoe) and one atheletic shoe. Hopefully it won’t cost too much. I am not sure if the athletic shoe should be a running shoe or a basketball shoe with more support. Does anyone have any suggestions? He said that I would be in the “heel lift” shoes for 3 months and then left.
The assistant returned and pulled up a piece of apperatus alonside the bed with a metal bar on it for me to put my foot on. He had me put my foot on it and try to get into neutral position. My achilles was extremely tight and quite painful when trying to get into to neutral. After about 10 minutes on the bar he just wrapped my leg in a fiberglass cast like before. This time he attempted to put a base on the heel by using extra fiberglass gauze. It is quite a heel on this cast. He then had me put a boot-like cover with a rubber sole around the cast.
Since I could not get my foot to neutral it really isn’t practical to walk in this. It is quite a bit higher than my other foot even with a shoe on. It is also not level on the bottom despite his effort to put a large heal on it. I am able to put some pressure on it while using my crutches and also stand comfortably balanced without crutches. I hope during the next week that puting some weight on it (60lbs or so) while I walk will loosen up my ankle and tendon so that I can get into neutral position. Even being partial weight bearing feels like good progress. Does anyone have any insight or advice on any thing I can do to achieve this next week?
I was very interested to read your post, it is nice to have someone to compare my progress against even though throughout this blog people say that you should not compare to other people because everyone heals differently. I have been walking for a few days now without crutches and the achilles feels good . At night when I get home from work I take off the boot and look at my foot to see how much swelling there is and really it looks about the same as when I was exclusively using the crutches. When my boot is off at night I use the crutches around the house. It just feels good to have my foot out of the boot and elevated while I lay on the couch. It does feel good to massage my calf and do some range of motion excercises on the ankle. I have 3 girls ages 8, 5 and 3 and they like making fun of their dad saying I can’t catch them, they always make a mistake and get too close and thats when I get them and tickle them. I wish I did not have to wait until Feb 5th to see my Doctor, hopefully he will let me start Physical Therapy then and let me go into 2 shoes.
My doctor snipped my gastrocnemus muscle (calf muscle) during surgery and my foot is in just about a 90 degree angle. I don’t get my walking caste for another three weeks, so we’ll see if walking is do-able!
Carol