Post-Surgery

Wow.  I have a pretty high pain threshold.  I also have very little tolerance for any narcotic pain medication, so I tend to get pretty stoic about pain.  And for whatever reason, it didn't occur to me how painful a foot could be.  But I'm getting ahead of myself...

I had my surgery on March 15th.  Everyone was super nice and super efficient.  I was highly impressed when Krissy was able to get an IV going on me on the first attempt.  That's never happened before.  Apparently, my veins are 'valvey' which has proven highly painful and annoying in the past.  Not this time.  Smooth as silk except that the IV site did start to ache at one point.  The anesthesiologist was great, too.  I felt like I was in good hands!

I remember nothing of the surgery at all. I awoke with this odd sensation in my right foot, but little awareness to much else.  My doc came by, but I only barely remember the conversation.  He did say that it went well and he gave me two films of the post-surgery xray to keep.  As I became more awake, I realized how nauseated I was.  It got worse.  And my foot started to really ache, too.  Over the course of my recovery, they gave me three doses of whatever pain med was in my IV (it made me loopy and nauseated) and a Vicodin by mouth.  They wanted me to demonstrate that I could eat and that I could pee before they'd let me go home.  By then, my husband was there and he said I looked green.  I managed to put down a little applesauce but kept refusing the offer of crackers or muffins.  When Krissy came back, she remembered that I was paleo and asked if a little jello would be OK.  I agreed since I had to eat something!

My husband eventually got the go ahead to take me home and I spent the whole ride trying really hard not to throw up in the car.  I finally got a chance to look at those xray films and I had THREE huge screws in my foot!  No wonder it hurt like hell - clearly there was some bone drilling going on there.  The nurse said that a slight fever was common with bone work like that but to monitor it and if it went up, to call immediately.  She also said that the pain would get worse before it got better as the localized numbing agent they gave me wore off.  Oh fun.  The doc told my husband that I'd completely torn the ligament from the bone in that joint.

I spent the next 4 days basically on the couch in a lot of pain and trying not to throw up everything I put in my mouth.  I avoided taking any additional doses of the meds and survived on Tylenol and Advil (after approval from my doc).  The foot pain was intense.  I slept in the guest room so that I wouldn't keep my husband up and there was no danger of him accidentally banging into me.

Now it's 6 days post-surgery.  There is still quite a bit of pain, but at least now it's manageable.  Everything that I do takes forever.  Putting away dishes, cleaning the kitchen, showering, cooking, etc.  My husband has been doing it all for days, so I'm trying to pick up a few things here and there, but wow...  I have my crutches that I use when out of the house, and when in the house, I mostly use a knee scooter.  I'll write more on the scooter later, but it allows me more use of my hands than crutches do.

I know that some day I'll both walk and run again...but honestly, that's very hard to even imagine at this point.  Ah well, each day brings new improvements, so I'll survive.  I just need to keep putting one foot in front of the other (so to speak)...right?