My Left Foot

The surgery last Wednesday went well. I did NOT get nauseous (for which I’m immensely grateful since I don’t “do” throw up!) and I’ve been in very little pain. I only took the prescribed oxycodone for the first 24 hours or so and have just been on Tylenol since, one in the morning and one in the evening (and that’s mostly been preventative). Do you see the two little nozzles? Those aren’t for drugs; they’re a cooling system! I came home from the hospital with a small, 6-pack-sized cooler that had a little pump in it connected to two tubes that attach to these nozzles. I fill the cooler with ice water, plug it in, and cool water circulates around the injured area. How cool (no pun intended) is that? And what will they think up next?!

This obviously isn’t a traditional cast. There is a hard L-shaped splint along the bottom and up the back. There is “cotton batting” inside and around my leg and everything is wrapped up with the Ace bandage. It all goes up so high on my leg because they actually had to take a piece of bone from right beneath my knee to use as a bone graft for my heel fracture. I can barely wiggle my toes but can’t move anything else. The most frustrating thing is not being able to bend my knee. This means I can’t give my poor right leg a break by kneeling on a chair with my left while brushing teeth, washing dishes, etc. Boy am I feelin’ it in my right hip socket!

The big “test” comes next weekend when I’ll fly to the Minneapolis area for a full weekend gig. Thankfully the church has an elevator and I’ve already made arrangements with Delta for an aisle, bulk-head seat on all my flights and a wheelchair reserved at each airport. (If I’m not careful, I might get a little too used to that kind of pampering!) I’m sure I’ll be exhausted afterwards but thankfully I’ll have 4 days once I’m back home with nothing on the schedule except to have my first post-op appointment (June 23). At that point they’ll take off all of these bandages … not sure what they’ll put back on.

Let’s just hope the surgery did what it intended to do!