P's and Q's

If you're headed for surgery, or have any sort of injury, you'd best be sure your manners are up to scratch.

You're going to be saying please and thank you a whole lot!

You can only imagine the list I had made up before going into surgery.  I pretty much figured I had thought of everything.  What I had not taken into consideration was how little I would be able to do for myself afterwards. 

Hopping around on crutches means you can't carry anything.  Something as simple as a cup of coffee becomes an Olympic event of maneuvers and stretching to simply get yourself and the coffee to the couch.  Food is brought to you, drinks are brought to you, and opening doors becomes training for contortionist camp.

So yes, you will be asking people to do the most simple tasks for you and saying thank you over and over again.

Don't get me wrong here, I am so incredibly grateful for everyone who helped me in any minuscule way over the past two weeks.

My recovery started at my Aunt and Uncle's place in Hilton, now dubbed "Cripple Creek" as that weekend they saw a few cripples come and go.  I was discharged from the hospital at the unlikely hour of 9pm - apparently not out of the ordinary for Midlands Medical, and I'm just glad I didn't have to stay over.  So I arrived at Cripple Creek late but still got a wonderful welcome and a hearty meal.  The weekend continued as such with lots of waiting on me and lots of thank you's along the way.

Dressing Changes and Male Nurses ;)

I went to my parent's place on the Sunday, my resting place for the following two weeks.  And if you've read previous posts you'll know that my Dad, with a broken ankle, was also on crutches at the time.  This made for a very interesting time.  And trust me, if you go somewhere with two people on crutches, you get a lot of strange looks!  My poor Mother has spent a lot of time running around the needs and whims of two hop-alongs.

The two of us, in all our glory!

For the first five days I was on high strength anti-anxiety medication, which confused me greatly to begin with.  But once it was explained that these dull your nervous system I understood.  And the day after I stopped taking them I understood even more.  That's when the real pain kicked in!  Unfortunately though, they cannot keep you on those meds for too long otherwise you'll have to be weaned off them because they affect the chemical functions in your brain.  I'm not that big into medication at the best of times, and prefer my body to take it's natural course through aches and illness, so taking pain meds three times a day made me me feel quite ill.

My fourth toe seems to be the one taking the most strain.  It feels almost as if I've stubbed it really badly and aches quite a bit, sometimes manageable, sometimes not.  I get random shooting pains through my foot as the nerves try to figure out what's going on.  But they are brief and subside fairly quickly.  The underneath of my foot and down the side are very sensitive to touch, but otherwise fine.  And I am only able to put very little pressure on the ball of my foot.

Two weeks after surgery my Doctor is happy with my progress and I am impressed with my recovery so far.  I have read a few accounts of recovery after Neuroma Removal, and definitely count myself lucky.  The only real issue is that my "dissolving stitches" are not dissolving!  Oh well, back to the Doc on Friday to check progress on those.

The pictures of my foot are not particularly gory, but not all that pretty either, so I have left them for last (if you don't want to see them, close this window now!).  They are in order of recovery at random times during the past two weeks.

Still stained from the iodine... Delightful.

Comparison of feet.

Toes still very bent out of shape from being strapped up.

A better angle to see the swelling.

Finally my toes starting to look normal again!

If you've made it this far, thanks for reading.  I wanted to document my recovery for anyone else searching for more information before going through with it, as there's not a whole lot out there.

Take care of yourselves.

Peace & Love
xx