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Dancing in the Dark

Filed under: Uncategorized — thelifechangingpop at 9:24 am on Thursday, November 14, 2013

Yesterday was a bit of a bleak day, thank you to Ron and Stuart for the advice, am back on the road to recovery.

Chose ‘Dancing in the Dark’ as my song for today as I have elected not to tell my surgeon that I have changed from his no name brand, heavy, uncomfortable moonboot to my beautiful Vacoped. Had an appointment with him this morning so put his boot on and crutched my way in. As per usual he had no interest in how I was doing. Changed my dressing,wound is looking good,his worries about it breaking down fortunately unfounded. He then changed his mind several times over when I should see him again, eventually settled on 3 weeks. Then he remembered that there were wedges in the boot and thought that maybe he should take one of them out but then said no weight bearing and he’ll leave the wedges in till I see the physio. Am allowed to take boot off to shower, yay yay yay but must keep wound wrapped in plastic and change dressing every 2 days.

So, yesterday I tentatively started touching my left foot down, such a great feeling to be moving towards being a biped again. Really enjoyed the feeling of rocking over in my foot, all done very gently and certainly lying in bed last night my calf could feel that it had done something beyond elevation and floating in a boot.

Today have done a little bit more partial weight bearing. Does anyone out there have an actual definition of what PWB should be or are we all dancing in the dark on this one too?

3 Comments

14

Comment by Ron

November 14, 2013 @ 9:02 pm

Hi LifechangingPop,

I just went in with my Vacocast on, and my Ortho was very impressed. Kobe and a few people from the Olympics used it as well. Next time you go, wear it.

With that said, I stared PWB with 2 crutches and did a Toe touch on the injured foot. I then went to 1 crutch by week 4.5. Don’t forget to start your ROM work as well - hinging ankle up and down. Do not move it around yet, but moving the toes and hinging the ankles is a great start. You have to do that to move your PF from 15 to 0.

ROM - I just hinged 2X per day, 15 times. That’s it.
Hopefully, others will chime in as well with good tips.

Don’t get discouraged by your Ortho, they all all the same. LOL. They also don’t want any liability issues either.

Trust me, you are right around the corner from having more freedom.

Good luck and keep us posted.
Ron

16

Comment by Ron

November 15, 2013 @ 4:00 pm

Lifechangingpop,

How are we doing today?

Ron

29

Comment by tord

November 18, 2013 @ 3:19 pm

Hi lifechangingpop.

I started Pwb after some 10+ days post-op, while still in my cast. The way I did that was by using my injured leg gently while doing interval training on a rowing machine. After 17 days, I got a moon boot, like you. A generic ROM walker. It’s a bit heavy, however, provided for free by my public healthcare, I didn’t care about the heavy ness. In fact, I loved it! But, I was Pwb from the moment I started using it, so I didn’t carry it around In that sense, Rather resting it on the ground. What I also liked was the point that instead of providing heel wedges, the angle was adjusted. IMO, this allows a more normal stride, as you can roll from you heel to your toe balls without landing hard on that ‘high heel’ heel wedge. I also used a swimming pool a few times early on. No boot - moving in and out of e pool by wheelchair. Felt great!

As soon as my cast was off, I started to do exercises with my ankle: plantarflexion/dorsiflexion, drawing circles, writing the alphabet with my big toe, activating my toes in general, etc. from about week four I started using a theraband for more resistance on the dorsiflexion. BTW: I was doing those exercises pretty much all day. From about week 5, while still Pwb, I was walking a lot - like 5+ miles a day. From week 6 or 7 I was alone with my then 15 month old son. Not optimal, but forced me into episodes of fwb a bit before schedule…

I visited my physio the same day as the cast was off, in order to work on the other joints in my ankle. Especially my big toe was stiff and painful. He also looked at the rest of my ankle, as he suspected multiple other injuries as well, as my injury story was a bit more dramatic than usual. As I can still notice 6 months on, my ankle was pretty much messed up, and by now my major concern.

This is a bit different from what Ron suggests, so you have some input to do your own decisions. Happy healing - it gets better faster than you think!

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