Day 13+, splint removed, casted

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Originally uploaded by megalitz

Well, today was a big day. The first follow-up. 13 days post-op. Wow. So, it was a little worse than I thought it was going to be, I guess in some ways, in other ways not.

Several hours were spent at the dr.'s office today, first, they removed the splint, which probably took 30 mins. I can't believe how much gauze was under there! Glad it wasn't my leg that was that big and swollen! My leg is actually very tiny already, *tear*. What I wasn't prepared for, was all of the blood and drainage that was going to be in the gauze. Dried, and stuck to my foot. Gross and ouch. So they finally got all that off, and we went to xray. Another 30 min. And I had my foot hovering over each xray film, b/c I couldn't bear to put my foot down. Any slight touch to my heel was unbearable.

Then the doc comes in. I'm soooo happy to see him. He's a great guy and doctor. Dr. Royer. He's a good man. So he looks at me, says I look good, answers a couple questions for me, clarifies exactly what he did in surgery, and says he'll see my back in 4 weeks when hopefully, I will be through with the cast and will be in a walking boot, whoot whoot! That is definite progress, I thought I would be casted for 6-8 weeks, but Dr. didn't do the tendon xfer he thought he would need to, so maybe I saved a couple weeks there.

Surgery: cut heel bone, move over 10mm (1cm), insert screw, LARGE screw! Repair torn tendons and repair/reattach stretched out ligaments. I have 3 incisions, 2 huge ones on the outside of my ankle, and one tiny one on the back of my heel. Lots of stitches. Yes, that was the next phase. Stitches have to come out today. NOT FUN. At all. So once those were removed, another 20 min, with 5-10 minutes in between each of these events while different people were in and out of the room...this is sounding like a horrible experience but it really wasn't, although it was painful and even Juan felt faint when they were removing the stitches. It didn't help that I was squeeling b/c of the pain. I actually said out loud, "geez, how do kids handle this?!" oh yeah, KIDS dont have to have this surgery! ha! duh. it takes years to do the kind of damage i have done. :)

So I finally get my cast, I ask him to put a ridiculous amount of padding in, which he says won't do me any good but be uncomfortable in the end, so i have this pretty black cast that is so small compared to the big splint i was lugging around!

All in all, it was a successful day, and I am progressing very well. As I was laying on the xray table, I was thinking about the last day I left boxing class, when I told the instructor I was out for ankle reconstruction, and she told me I was hard core. Lying there today, I began to understand a whole new level of "hard core." I'm raising my leg in the air, looking at these ginormous incisions thinking, "all those years of soccer, I can't believe I did this, that I played through all this, that I'm actually laying here looking at this, and I'm not even playing college ball anymore..." It was just really, really, weird. I grew up a little more today. I'm not exactly itching to get back on that field...I'm just happy that I will be able to walk and run again. :)

Pain: 2
Quote: "Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional." -M. Kathleen Casey...Well, M. Casey, I'm not so sure I agree with you today. :) Those stitches were stingers!