Stir Crazy

Get me outta here! Feb. 8 I had surgery on both of my feet. I had a tailor's bunion on each foot, hammertoes on the 4th & 5th toes corrected and both 5th toes de-rotated. My doctor wanted me off work for a month. I told him that, as we discussed for him, that was not a possibility for me and that I would not be able to do the surgery if it HAD to happen that way. We "negotiated" down to two weeks.

The first three days of this, I wasn't allowed to get up to do ANYTHING but go to the bathroom. I had to move to the bathroom by shuffling from the couch or the bed by taking very slow, tiny steps on only the back of my heels, wearing these lovely black velcro, open toed orthopedic shoes. Then for the next week and a half, once I could get out of bed, I had to walk the same way. I think I walked that way so much I bruised the bottom of my left heel.

The surgery took an hour and a half as outpatient surgery. I wasn't tubed for my anesthesia so evidently, I was basically awake and lucid for the entire procedure, but I remember nothing from approximately 2 minutes after they put Versed in my IV until I was back in my room all bandaged up.

Then, we have an ice storm in the middle of the night the night before I am supposed to go back to the doctor for my first post-surgery check up. The doctor's office didn't open until noon. My appointment was for 10:15. It would have been nice if they had called me before we headed over there, with the boy in tow since school was cancelled. Oh well, we went at 12:30. I got a thumbs up and they were looking wonderful.

I put my doctor to the test when it came to prescribing pain medication. I'm allergic to codeine and most "modern" pain medications are codeine based. Demerol doesn't work for me, he says darvocet is like "spitting in the wind and can cause more problems" and he doesn't like percocet. We ended up with 15mg morphine tabs. He was quite concerned about its possible effect on me after seeing how the Versed did me. Therefore he also prescribed phenergen for nausea. The morphine almost worked for me. It actually did work, but for only the first hour or so after I took it. Then almost all effect was gone. When I went in for my follow-up, he asked how the morphine was working and I told him. He wouldn't prescribe a larger or more frequent dose because he says I'm too little of a lady. Oh well. I quit taking it after a week.

Got half of my stitches out last week and the remainder today. Still no real shoes. Damn! I knew he wouldn't let me in to my "normal" shoes yet as he has told me he would prefer never. My normal shoes are no shorter than 2 1/2" up to 4 1/2" platform soles. But he wouldn't even let me put on my tennis shoes.

About 1/2" of one of my six incisions had come open. He decided it was probably because one of the bandages was on too tight and my foot sweating had caused it to open up. He put a couple of steri-strips on it along with some neosporin, a bit of gauze and a band-aid.

At least I'm driving again, albeit not in MY car since it is a six speed. I really want to be back in it.

I know I sound really impatient, but I think I've been a good patient. Rarely cranky, not very needy, fairly self suffieient and slept alot. I've been going stir crazy with cabin fever and I'm glad I'm on the mend and they're looking good!

Where's My Brain?

Wow. I sat down to write this blog and even had a great idea in my mind, but words are failing me. I can only suppose it is lack of exercise of the mental muscle, but I feel like, doh. I was educated, then trained, for the first part of my "career", as a journalist, a professional writer. Where'd it all go? I'm having a difficult time accessing it. Maybe it's because it's 1:12 am.

Maybe if I try this again tomorrow (later today) at a more sane hour, I can think more intelligently and write the post I originally sate down to write!