Swimming in the Styx

Back to the orthopod the next Friday.   Unwrapped again.   They start pulling out stitches.  ”Oh, this looks good”, they say. It’s hideous, but whatever.   Then they cover it back up with Steri-strips.

“Do you have a sock?”  No; I thought about bringing one but didn’t.  They give me a compression stocking without toes.   But I get the impression I should start getting some sox soon.   Then the tech comes in with a big black thing, in two parts.  First they try to get my foot into it at all.   That doesn’t work, because my foot is wider than what they think of as normal–partly swelling, partly its natural shape. They search in the back room for a Large–yes!    It is large–honkingly so.  ”Oh, this will stick out way past your toes and help protect them.”   Yeah, my footprint now approaches 18×8 and 3 pounds–and it’s still snug.  They show me the styrofoam-like wedges in the heel, and explain that while it will seem as if I am walking heel and toe, it’s an illusion–my foot is still immobilized such that my heel will do all the work–but I can stand on it, insofar as I can stand it.

They want to use only 3 wedges (they nest together and are held on by sticky tape on the bottom of each) but that hurts too much, so they grudgingly allow me to use all 4 but say “try to get rid of the 4th one in a day or two”–removing from the bottom of the stack.  I stand up–it’s wonderful!    Tho’ not without a little pain, but who cares?

I still have my crutches, so I crutch to the car one last time.   At home, I keep them right next to me  but break out my cane–the swordcane I bought 15 years ago and have been waiting for a chance to use.  I limp, or gimp, very slowly.  I notice that I can only bring my right foot to be about even with my left foot–I can’t move it past the left foot.   I’m still on Tylenol–but only 3 tabs a day.

Two days later I remove the 4th wedge–it’s a little painful, but I can do it.  The boot is almost comforting.   I hobble into church to hear the Christmas cantata, and endure various comments.  I feel lucky when I hear a friend describe how he ripped his Achilles tendon apart–it was just frayed for several inches on either side.   The point being that surgery wasn’t an option–they would have had to cut away too much of the tendon.  So he was in a boot for nine months!!   At least I can look forward to better than that.

The doc said a) when I come back in January I might get it off!  (”We do aggressive therapy now”) and start therapy.  And he wants me to remove the 3rd wedge in two weeks (Christmas Day).  O–K—   I simply have faith that this will work out.   When I told him I was fairly pain-free he seemed surprised (muttering under his breath “maybe that anesthetic we put in the incision was a good idea”) but pleased.  And really–the scar irritates, and the heel area gets swollen and throbbing, but I wouldn’t say there’s pain.

So I start life hobbling around.   I can go up steps one foot at a time.  Slowly.   Everything is slow.  But being able to put my foot down is wonderful–except of course it hurts to keep it down.   Once again I’m told that I can drive, technically speaking, but shouldn’t keep my foot dangling for a long trip–like our ten-hour drive to Michigan coming up.    Luckily, I’m not the only driver–and if she has her way, I won’t drive at all.

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