Hurts So Good

Ohhh the pain train pulled into the station overnight, woke me up damn early (2:45 anyone?!) and I’m running on fumes today. The reason? This heavy metal bastard:

Here’s the thing about tendon surgery, or really any foot/ankle procedure that requires cutting bones and reshaping feet… those cute little plastic Air Casts are generally not an option. They are designed to offload weight in a foot, not to hold it together like jaws of steel. This boot I’m wearing is called a cam walker with metal struts, and as you can see, it’s pretty intense. What makes the next few weeks worse is that the expectation is to keep it on as close to 24/7 as humanly possible, including while sleeping. It’s heavy (about 2.5 pounds, which is SO MUCH dead weight to be dragging around on a leg that isn’t allowed to do anything), it causes my leg to itch AND it rubs up against my incisions. And since I’m boney, it also hits riiiiiight on my shin bone. In short, it’s like a human bear trap. You can also see that it just barely fits my foot right now, so my lil shish-k-toe sticks out ever so slightly past the end. The next size up was a full inch+ larger, so this is the closest I have to “perfect fit.”

The other interesting thing about this guy is he’s got about 3 inches of heel lift in him. These boots are designed to hold a foot initially at a 45 degree angle (think relaxed foot just chilling), with that moving closer to a full 90 degrees—through the regular removal of thin slices from the stacked heel insert—by the time weight-bearing starts. Lemme just say… that sounds lovely but oh boy does that throb with each slice removal! This is pretty common for achilles tendon rebuilds (totally makes sense) and the same approach is used for posterior tibial recons as well. That is, tendons are sewn in tight, and we must slowly, over time, stretch them to use them correctly. So while I was super lucky and my post-op was breezy, those salad days are over. It’s time to start heading deep into the pain cave for initial rehab.

In addition to wearing the boot all day, every day, I also have to start massaging the foot, including the stitches. If you’ve ever gotten a paper cut, imagine that, but then taking salt and, ever so gently, rubbing it continually right into the wound. It feels that good. So this means we actually put those pain meds to use, we try REAL HARD to stay away from the Advil (confession: I broke once today and had a single one) and we grin and bear it.

So yeah, if the pain train could go ahead and skip my station at 2:45 tomorrow morning… that would be greaaaat.