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Day 6: cheilectomy recovery and post-operative doctor appointment

Night 5 into day 6 I slept well. However, I woke up with some pretty sharp and uncomfortable pain. Chalking this up to trying to ease off pain medicine yesterday as well as returning to my kids/house/being up on my feet more than I should have. Thankfully a dose of medicine dulled the pain. My goal for my pain medication is to stretch out the time between when I take it, in hopes of gradually not taking any more by week 2 or 3. 

This afternoon I went to see the doctor. I saw my incision, of which - you’re welcome - I’m not going to include a photo. It is larger than I thought... 3 inches long and 6 stitches. I got a new bandage in a classic red color that is going to inspire my next pedicure. Next week I will have this red bandage removed and then no more bandages! I will still wear the boot for a few more weeks thereafter, however. The doctor showed me several great photos on her phone of my foot in the middle of surgery... mixed in with photos of her son playing basketball. I got to see my cartilage (or lack there of) in all it’s bloody glory. She also told me everyone in the operating room thought I was 29 and was appalled at the horrible state of my feet at such a young age. Once they looked at my chart and realized I was 39 and in fact old, they were slightly less surprised. I include that unrelated anecdote for no other reason than to feel flattered. 

She took a new image of my foot, and I put it side by side with my before image. Left is before, right is after. In both, I circled in blue the arthritic joint (before and after). I also circled one example in green from my other healthy toes of what a healthy toe joint should look like... clean little half moons of bone with a good pocket of space between the bones where cartilage sits. You can see in the before image (blue circle) of my big toe that there is no clean half moon but rather a jagged edged space where the two bones are sitting/grinding against each other on the big toe’s left and right edges. (The ugly jagged mess is even more pronounced when you enlarge the photo to see it in closer detail.) Cartilage has been worn away from these areas over time and I have 30 percent of the normal amount of cartilage left in this joint (sad face). Also, fragments of bone broke off from the bones rubbing against one another and were floating around in my toe. Those were removed and the joint was generally cleaned up to function smoothly (blue circle in the after image) like the other healthy joints in my other 4 toes. 
Before                          After

I’m walking around pretty well in my boot these days. However, as my doctor said, don’t mistake being able to walk for being supposed to walk. The less I walk the better I feel. The more often my foot stays elevated, the better I feel. Simple as that... and easier said than done!

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