Two weeks Post op

I am two weeks post op today. It has been a while since I posted anything so I have had several things happen since I last wrote anything.

I took a trip to Kentucky for Easter to see my husbands family. It was not an easy trip to make but I did get through it. I got to see my son who lives in Illinois who I miss terribly. I also got to hold my new grand baby (who lives in Texas) for the first time and that made the painful trip worth all the pain I endured.

I was lucky that I didn't have to make the trip all at one time. My dad has a house in Tennessee that is half way between our house in SC and my father in law's house in Kentucky. We left Thursday afternoon for Tennessee. On the way we stopped to eat. Since this was my first time out of the house I was very nervous to be in public since my surgery for the first time. I had a wonderful pizza at a cute pizza restaurant in Tryon NC. I was very uncomfortable while sitting. I did keep my leg elevated on my wheel chair but the way I was sitting was pulling at my Achilles tendon which made me very uncomfortable. After dinner I thought I should go to the rest room before we got back on the road. Like I said this restaurant was very cute but NOT wheel chair friendly so Michael had to bring in my crutches. They had very uneven (pretty but not very safe) brick flooring. The restroom door was too small to fit my wheel chair in so I had to crutch it in to the restroom. I may be wrong but I thought that every public facility across the country had to be wheel chair friendly or at least handicap friendly. This place was NOT either. Thank goodness Kinlie was there to help me get in to the bath room stall because there was no rail and like I said the floor was very unstable. I did survive but not without being in a lot of pain and VERY nervous.

We made sure to pack PLENTY of pillows and blankets that I could rest my foot on. I drive a fairly new suburban that has bucket seats as the middle seats. I started out with my foot extended across to the other seat. This was very uncomfortable. I tried to take my medicine thinking that I would be able to sleep on the drive there. Since this is a very curvy ride my foot kept sliding around. This made me tense all over and there was no sleep for me. We got smarter the next day and decided that it may be more comfortable for me to lay my seat back and extend my foot to the middle console between the two front seats. This was a much better plan as it was not totally comfortable but much more comfortable than the previous plan.

Needless to say I did make it there and back. It was a very painful trip and had it not been for getting to see my son and gran baby I would not try it again but I did have fun.

The swelling in my foot goes down a good bit at night while I'm sleeping. two days ago when I started moving around (by moving around I mean getting up to potty then back to bed with my foot elevated) my foot started to swell again. I don't have a lot of room in my cast to move, but what little room I do have my foot shifted (just enough) and when it swelled back up it was pressing on a nerve. OMGosh was this so painful. I thought I was going to have to call the doctor to have him take off my cast. If I could have gotten it off myself I think I would have taken it off just to get relief. I spent a big part of the night putting my leg up in the air just to get relief so the pressure was not touching my nerve. I am also having a lot more pins & needles feelings in my foot and my toes so with that along with the nerve pain it was NOT a good day and night. By pins and needles I mean it literally feels like someone is putting pins and needles into my skin. With all of that put together my foot was just jumping around like it had a mind of it's own. If it had not been so painful it would have actually been funny. My nurse did tell me this would happen because not only did my foot go through a lot of trauma, but they had to work with a lot of nerves while doing my surgery.

When I woke up the next morning I had relief and my cast was not on the nerve. Now that I know that can happen I make sure that as my foot is swelling during the day I'm not moving a lot as to make sure my foot doesn't shift to the wrong spot again. Definitely DON'T want anything inside the cast pressing on a nerve again.