Wednesday 28 September 2011

Yes......... I panicked !

Last weekend, after managing fairly well for 3 weeks without the boot & using my crutches less & less I had planned a sailing reunion with my crew down in Southampton. Unfortunately I hurt my foot! I stepped up with my good foot, wobbled backwards & lost balance with my entire weight dropping back onto the ball & toes of my injured foot. The pain was immediate & severe. I felt a horrible crunching in the base of my toes, followed by a searing pain through the bottom arch.
It swelled pretty much straight away, a band of swelling all the way across the bottom of my forefoot & base of my toes. The pain was scarily similar in sensations to the pain I'd experienced following my 1st surgery. I took a hefty dose of ibuprofen & hoped that it would settle down & that perhaps I'd just jarred the joints & ligaments or something. The fear, just kept rising up inside though, managing that whilst being with my sailing crew was difficult. A couple of times the fear & panic overwhelmed me to the point that I shed a few tears. Sure I felt run down due to the pain, but the panic & fear overtook.

48 Hrs later I gave in, walking was incredibly difficult, the ball of my foot & underneath the forefoot felt horribly tender, my 2nd & 3rd toes were pretty swollen too with some bluish bruising starting to materialise. So on Sunday evening I found myself in the A & E department of a nearby hospital. After waiting for a couple of hours I was seen & lateral & AP Xrays were taken. To my immense relief no significant fractures were evident on either Xray !
But the consultant was concerned enough about my inability to weight bear & the swelling to give me another pair of crutches (my 3rd !) & prescribe very strong pain killers before discharging me with strict instructions not to weight bear until I had visited my own consultant.

So I saw my own consultant last night & after reviewing the Xrays again he agreed there are no significant fractures evident & my midfoot reconstruction still looked intact which was great news. He was slightly concerned over the swelling & tenderness in my forefoot & toes, with my planned holiday to the US due to happen in a week he has requested a CT scan before confirming that I'm OK to travel.

So it's been a pretty eventful few days, & here I am waiting to go back to hospital this afternoon for the CT. I feel so relieved I can't tell you, the thoughts of having to go back into surgery or back into cast were enough to make my stomach lurch & my heart sink. So I'm keeping everything crossed & thinking positive thoughts that the scan results are good, I'll get them during my follow up with Mr Ritchie on Saturday. In the meantime resting the foot & only partial weight bearing with crutches allowed.

Tuesday 27 September 2011

Breaking the silence .......

Well ! Where have I been ?
Apologies first of all, I know I've been a bit quiet, it's been a very tough couple of months........
So after my second operation on the 15th July, I got an infection in the wounds. Which set me back a few weeks. Innitially after the op I felt great. It turned out to be more complicated than planned, I needed some tendon repair & cleaning up which meant another 2 1/2 hrs under anaesthetic. But I felt good and after a couple of days & was looking forward to walking without my crutches relatively quickly. What actually happened was the two weeks planned holiday following the op were spent with me feeling quite ill & eventually not being able to walk at all.
It put me back,but all in all I got over it quite quickly,
What was harder was the walking & weaning out of the boot. I'm no wimp, but when I started to walk I couldn't believe how painful or difficult it was going to be, or was. I knew it wouldn't be straightforward but no body explained to me or prepared me for just how hard it would be. The initial disappointment was so hard..............
I tried to stand up, but I just couldn't. Taking the first few steps out of cast were petrifying. People just do not prepare you for it.
Dealing with my weakness, limp & the pain have been a huge problem. I suppose that maybe I've been hoping that when I came out of the boot I would walk normally. in fact I think I've been in some sort of denial for the last 5 months & was pinning my hopes on it all being fine once I got out of cast.
So when it happened, that is the failure & pain when trying to walk normally, I really struggled with facing up to just how serious this injury is. I didn't deal with it, I cried lots & pushed more & more, hoping for a breakthrough, it didn't happen.