Oh Happy Day!

Bye bye crutches, I'm walking now.  YES!

Transitioning from two crutches to one crutch to no crutch has gone a lot quicker than I had anticipated.  How wonderful it feels to have two free arms again, it is very liberating!  Within the next couple of weeks my plan is to begin experimenting with walking without my boot.  Nick, my PT, tells me that I can expect an onset of pain and discomfort once I dabble in bootlessness.  Bring it on, I'm certain that it will never even come close to the magnitude of the pain I lived with prior to my ankle replacement. 

Today at PT we could see a significant improvement in my ROM.  Better than my therapist thought we would see at this point in my recovery.  It's good news all around.  I'm getting my life back, I am elated, and my emotions are running wild.  Oh happy day!

I have only one concern at this stage, and it is my big toe and extensor tendon.  My big toe locks up and sometimes I can't bend it at all.  The extensor tendon is extremely sensitive, even to touch.  Nick worked his magic today and demonstrated how I should exercize the joints in my toe, and after that, I had immediate relief.  So I'll being doing some big toe work outs at home.  When Nick explained why my toe isn't working, it made total and complete sense.  For years I have walking with my foot straight out to the side, because that's the only way I could move about.  When you walk like that, you are not using your toes.  Well, if your not using your toes for years and then you have major work done and have tendons and ligaments moved around, then you're thrown into a cast for weeks and weeks....if I were a toe, I'd throw in the towel too.  It's not rocket science.

Today I laid down my crutch so Nick could see how I was walking on my own.  He immediately said that he has no worries about me, and to just keep my crutch around in case I start getting sore.  We rearranged my schedule to two days of PT visits instead of three, because of my progress.   I need to keep my foot straight!  After so many years of walking like a sidewinder, it's taking a lot of practice on my part to keep it straight.  Bad habits are hard to break, but I'm always up for a challenge!

When this whole process began, my surgeon and I sat across from each other on more than one occasion and discussed the pros and cons of ankle fusion vs. total ankle replacement.  At first Dr. Johnson asked that I wait until I'm 55 if I opted for replacement surgery.  I opted out of ankle fusion because of the havoc it wreaks on the surrounding joints.  I didn't see the value of relieving my ankle arthritis just to end up with arthritis everywhere alse in my foot.  Fix pain to get pain, didn't make sense.  Thank goodness the FDA finally got around to approving the STAR ankle implant in the U.S., because it turned out to be a better option for someone my age.  I don't expect this implant to last forever, most of them don't.  I will at the very least need a revision down the road, and that's  totally fine with me.  Even if I have to have the whole thing redone, I'm okay with that too.  If I can buy myself ten good years of pain free living, well, what more can I ask for?  Having my ankle replaced is turning out to be one of the best decisions I have ever made. 

Still wondering if the hammer is going to drop...  because right now I feel like the poster child for total ankle replacement surgery.  The high priestess of pain free recovery. Seems to be too good to be true, and I can't help but be worried about that. But I'll motor on, and see where this takes me, and will remain as positive as I can. 

Best,
~Suzanne