As I've aged over the years, little injuries to myself have become more severe which, in turn, requires more recovery time, if not external help.
A couple of years back, I tore a tendon on my pinky finger playing with the boys on a family camping trip. It was painful. It required doctors and physical therapists and I still get to deal with a digit that will never be straight again.
Then last February 28th, about the time I was finishing up PT for the crooked digit, I took devil-dog Juno out for a piddle and stepped off the side of our front stoop.
My right foot landed on a loose landscaping stone and I rolled the ankle, spraining it.
In the 9 months that followed, it has been swelling, hurting and occasionally locking up on me. Most of the time, the locking up would occur after long bouts of sitting like work days in the office or Sundays sitting on my fat butt watching football games.
However, there were many other times when going down steps would cause severe pain and the occasional lock-up, which is highly undesirable because of the obvious fall situation.
So, I finally sucked it up and went to the doc as my list of other ailments was finally long enough to justify a visit.
They did more x-rays and then sent me in for an MRI. The doc I was supposed to see looked at the MRI and declined my visit, sending me to a foot/ankle specialist.
I know! A specialist! I'm moving up in the world!
I went in and had a chat with the fine bloke and he showed my the MRI pictures and explained what I was looking at.
Turns out that I had broken the cartilage cap between the foot & ankle and there was a floater piece in there, hence the occasional locking up of motion.
I top of that, I had bruised the top of the foot bone and where the bruise (blood) eventually dried up, I had a cyst that had developed there.
The fix? Surgery to go in and remove the floater, scrape that damaged bone down to create a divot and then the bleeding form the bone should cause some scar tissue to form, replacing the part of the cartilage cap that I had broken off.
And so, on Dec 22nd, I had the surgery. The remainder of that day and the 23rd were smooth sailing. Virtually no pain and I took neither anti-inflammatory nor pain meds!
Wooo-hooooo!
Then came Christmas Eve which saw me spend the better part the day in my bedroom trying to sleep thru some rather intense pain...
Finally, I got to pay for my stupid... Pain is a wonderful teacher and reminds us during recovery that we do NOT want to go thru this again, and as such, we should behave...
So on to pictures...
Just a warning; they're not too bad really, but if you're squeamish at all, you may want to simply move on to the next post.
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| This is the wrap, with about 3 pounds of gauze under it. I think the gauze was as much for padding as it was for mopping up any errant blood. |
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| The boot to stabilize things. I always thought these were kinda cool, but I'm over that now! |
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| Oh, and then I broke the middle toe on my good foot by losing balance on the crutches (trying to go too fast) and stubbing the poor little piggy on the left crutch. More pain for good teaching... This was several days later. |
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| That's my foot with the three small incisions the good doc made... a little swelling but looking pretty good here. |
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| Then there's this... my leg turned a different color to up past the knee and got crazy bad itchy! It's also swelling a little more. This was taken after we had returned from the doc's office for a check-up and to have the sutures removed. |
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| Then this showed up, which actually made me feel a little bit better because of how bad my heel had been hurting. |
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| And then there's this shot from Jan 2nd. The bruised heel is still going strong along with new bruising across nearly the entire top of the foot and the whole thing is bloated like a Schmitz at a buffet. |
And so it is... If you were thinking that you may sprain your ankle this year, I would discourage that.
Back to work tomorrow... in the office that is. Yikes!
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