Cast off, into the boot, 2 complications
I am at 4 weeks post op and I just got my cast off today. I was supposed to be in the cast until 6 weeks but I asked the surgeon if it was ok to get the boot early because the cast was loose. I also stepped on my bad foot on friday so I wanted to get it checked out…I was feeling a little bit of pain and throbbing right on the bad achilles which I hadn’t felt before. Turns out everything is OK and I now have a boot. I took the day off work and I showered, cleaned my leg, and have been letting my foot breathe today. It is nice to move my ankle around slowly.
The atrophy in my calf is pretty substantial. It is going to be a long road to recovery. One complication that I have is a large blister underneath my heel bone. When I was in the splint for 2 weeks, I had a painful burning sensation in my heel and I called the nurse, who told me not to worry, “It is just the nerves coming back to life”. It turns out that the splint was irritating my heel and now I have a huge blood blister. I don’t think it will delay the timeline to get back into shoes, but will take about 6 weeks to go away.
Overall, the wound is healing well and i can move my foot up and point my toes slightly. The other complication is nerve damage on the outside of my foot. It is fairly common to have slight nerve damage after this surgery, but unfortunately mine is the entire outside of my foot from heel to toe. The doctor says this should come back in time, but to avoid areas with people who smoke (and not to smoke either).
NWB for another 2 weeks. Then PWB. Then hopefully some PT.
Hope everyone is “heeling” well. Cheers
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I had some unhappy nerves on the outside of my foot too. Mine was mostly around my ankle. Eventually those nerves calmed down. I still have one, sort of numb, spot on my heel after over a year. It’s around the scar area. It gets a bit less numb over time but still doesn’t feel quite the same as the other heel does. So - nerve damage does heel after a while but some things take a very long time.
After surgery I was numb on the outside of my foot from below the incision through the outer two toes. After a couple weeks, the numbness started receding quickly. I’m 8 months out and now just have some partially numb area on the outside of my heel.