Day 5: cheilectomy recovery

Today I continued to feel even better walking in my boot. (At this point I’m barely using the crutches anymore.) Still taking pain medications - the low amount (rather than the max prescribed). Last night’s sleep was the first night I didn’t set a timer to take it. I slept through the night just fine, yay! But this afternoon I didn’t take it and the pain was sharper than it has been in a couple days. So I’m going to keep with it a little longer.

Probably the pain was sharper this afternoon because I returned to my house/two little kids. (I had been staying at my parents’ house so as to more easily stay off my feet and heal.) Not surprisingly, being back at home had me on my feet significantly more than I have been since the surgery. Combined with trying to go off the pain meds, things got a little painful. Still nothing as bad as the pain at the beginning though.

Oh, I also had a short outing today to a store with a very limited amount of walking. It was overwhelming to be back out in the world but also welcomed. It did tire me out though.

Tomorrow is my post operative appointment with the doctor. Looking forward to seeing what’s going on under my bandages... and also to hearing more about what she saw when she opened up my toe.

On the plus side, returning home I got some awesome art on my bandage.

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Day 18: cheilectomy recovery

I’m really starting to round the bend in terms of feeling normal again. Don’t get me wrong, I am a long way off from walking normally in shoes, but with the boot I can move through life and do almost anything I need to do… Well, anything one can do in a giant ski boot type thing. This weekend I spent a lot of time on my feet - playing with my children, potty training one of said children (oy), doing laundry, in the kitchen. I drove on the interstate, and in some busy traffic, and felt fairly confident. It’s not normal driving conditions for me but I know how to work within my parameters and it’s going ok. I noticed this evening that I was walking more comfortably around my house in flip-flops. Whereas the last few days I’ve tried flip-flops, but have had to walk by kind of rolling each step on the right side of my foot (to protect the left side of my foot where the surgery occurred), today I find that I can kind of bear weight evenly on my foot and even push off on it a little bit. T...

All about my feet... and, why I started this blog

This week I turned 39. I will have a cheilectomy on my right foot (the foot I use to drive) in one month. In the years during college, and more than a decade afterward, I lived in Chicago. I love fashion and wore a lot of high heeled footwear. Given that I lived in a large city, I walked almost everywhere I went - a block to the grocery, several blocks to the train station, a couple miles during a day of shopping and fun with friends. I loved city life and I loved walking. I realized quickly, upon moving to a big city where my walking would total miles each day, that high quality footwear was important, so I did not skimp on inexpensive, poorly made shoes. I invested in well-made shoes. I say this for no other reason than to dispute one idea put forth as a cause of foot problems - that poorly made or ill-fitting shoes are to blame. That was not the cause in my case. Following the birth of my first child at age 31, I started to notice that I was not able to walk comfortably in high...

Day 2: cheilectomy recovery

I woke up on day 2 to great pain... despite having been taking the maximum amount of pain medication prescribed to me. It was very demoralizing. I slept poorly night 1 into day 2, probably in part because I wore the immobilizer boot in bed. It protected my toe but made middle of the night moving around highly clunky and difficult. (Think sleeping in a ski boot.) I didn’t sleep for the first 4-5 hours of the night... maybe a bit of dozing but nothing deep. I did sleep a little more deeply for a couple of spells in the last half of the evening. So, upon waking up I was not only in pain but very, very tired. As a result, I slept off and on for the entirety of day 2. The good news was that the pain, which was much worse than anything I expected, was horrible in the morning but eased up as the day went on. By the time I went to bed on day 2, I felt like I could deal with the situation. I even decided to take a slightly lesser amount of pain medication overnight from day 2 into day ...

Notes on a Cheilectomy

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