Notes on a Cheilectomy

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 overwh...

Not much has changed today. I am still managing the post surgical pain with minimal pain medication on a regular basis. I am waiting to feel the pain today to take medicine, rather than taking medicine on a regular basis (ie every 4 hours).  I guess one change is that I am using the crutches less. When I have the boot on, I can walk in it fine (in terms of pain). When I don’t have the boot on, I am using crutches. But mostly, I try to have the boot on when I’m up on my feet.  And even more than that, I’m trying to keep off my feet - with my foot elevated. It’s getting a little boring but it’s a nice change of pace from running around after two kids so I’m trying to enjoy it. Today is Boot Day. It’s on. 

On day 3 I woke up feeling better about life. My pain had moderated, and night 2 into day 3 I had slept fairly well. I did set alarms twice during the night to take pain medication, which probably helped me sleep. Right off the bat I did not feel like eating normal food for breakfast - still a bit of nausea - but as the day went on parts of my normal diet started to sound appealing again… Namely coffee and iced tea, and even pizza.  Pain was much better managed today with pain medication. I still took it at regular intervals, but reduced the dosage. I can imagine being off of pain medication within three days or so at this rate. Today I put the boot back on my foot, and walked in the boot independently as well as in the boot with crutches support. The hybrid boot/crutches movement is very doable. Clearly I am going to have to adapt to moving much more slowly throughout life this way in the month to come, but it is not too bad. Before today, the pain in my foot was too much ...

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 ...

This morning was my cheilectomy procedure. I was excited to go in - probably not many patients show up to surgery with big smiles on their faces! The procedure was easy. The anesthesia took hold incredibly fast and when I woke up in recovery (one hour after being wheeled to the operating room) I felt like I’d had the best night’s sleep of my life. God bless anesthesiologists!! I recovered in a bed from the lingering anesthesia for about 45 minutes and was removed from various machines. Nothing hurt. My foot was in what looked like an ace bandage type thing from maybe four inches above my ankle to my toes. They strapped my immobilizer boot onto my foot and I walked to the restroom unaided. It felt great! Of course, I was still numb from local anesthetic. I ate some graham crackers so I could take my first dose of pain medication on a non-empty stomach. Soon after that we departed the surgical center and I had an egg sandwich and a little coffee. I felt great and grew sleepy as the m...

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...