Why no Physical Therapy?

I just realized it has been almost a month since my last post.  Well that is for many good reasons!  First I have been out enjoying the last days of warm weather up here in Maine.  I have kept myself very busy between walks, trips to visits friends, trips home for a wedding, and camping trips.  I consider myself completely healed.  I had to cancel my check up with my doctor, because I had missed work two weeks in a row for my traveling :), so I do not go back until the end of the month.  But everything is doing remarkably well.  I probably will not post much more after this.  I promise to get a picture up of my scar.  I think it looks really good.

So I thought I would spend a bit of time discussing my doctor's reasoning for not making me go through any Physical Therapy.  At a wedding I was at last weekend I was talking to my friend who is a Physical Therapist about my surgery and I admitted how happy I was I didn't have to go through any PT.  So my doctor does not prescribe PT for most of his patients.  For most of the ankle injuries he deals with, he puts you in a cast for 8 weeks and orders to be non-weight bearing.  This 8 weeks allows the injury to heal completely.  Then after the cast is removed, he wants you to walk.  His reasoning for not ordering PT is he says after the cast is removed and you start to walk again, the ankle swells, gets red, and hurts!  Physical Therapists are trained so when they see that, they make the patient slow down and rest and stop whatever they were doing that caused that.  My doctor said that is going to happened, and you have to simply push through it.  He doesn't want the PT to slow down your walking again.  I will be honest, walking again hurt like hell.  It was hard, but I was so happy to walk again so I just did it.  Luckily I also had Vicodin that he prescribed :).  When I told my friend my doctor's reasoning, she seemed offended.  But agreed that she could see his point, and obviously it worked for me.  But she said she could see it not working for many patients who baby it or find it hard to really push themselves, and I do agree with that.  I am not saying PT is bad after this surgery, but this was just my doctor's reasoning.  Honestly, I was happy not to have to go through any PT, its a pain in the ass.  I went through it for over 10 weeks for my ACL repair.  So I was thrilled when I didn't have to go through it again.  Obviously, my doctors method worked for me and works for his patients.

My surgery was on June 21st, 2010.  Today is October 8th, 2010.  You do the math on what week I am on, I tried and stopped.  I am so happy to be walking again and back to normal.  I have been going to the gym and working out again.  Today I am going to swim some laps, which I am very excited about.  If you have to go through this surgery, it sucks, I will be honest.  However, it is worth it.  I am so glad I had it done and it is fixed.

Everyday Gets Better - Week 10 Post Op

I have had a great end to my summer.  Even though I was on bed rest and in a cast for the majority of summer, these last few weeks have been great.  My parents came up for a visit and we rented a camp (for you non-Mainers, that is basically a cabin in the woods or on a lake).  The camp was on a beautiful lake on the blue hill peninsula.  It was a great visit with my parents and made me forget at times about this whole ankle incident.

At times, when I walk my ankle is fine and I walk like a normal person would.  I have even had coworkers comment on it.  However, there are times when it is stiff or sore and I notice a limp.  There isn't much pain in the ankle.  My knee at times can hurt, I think it is just getting use to moving again.  The swelling does get bad.  At work I try to put my leg on my desk when I can, but I have been getting so busy that I usually am unable to elevate it until I come home.  It is really stiff in the morning and when I get up it takes a few steps until I am able to really walk on it, but every morning does get better.

Walking is getting better as well.  Over the weekend I really wasn't able to track my mileage.  But last night I walked 2 miles on a gravel trail and through the woods on an uneven trail.  For me that is huge.  Not the mileage, but the uneven surfaces.  When you walk on uneven surfaces, your ankle stretches and moves in ways it doesn't on flat surfaces.  But I was confident walking there.  My speed when I walk is somewhat normal, I don't walk really slow like I did the first few days.  I am hoping to get up to three or four miles by the end of the week.  I really wish I could swim laps in a pool, by my doctor said not until my next check up. 

The swelling in my ankle is the worst when I come home from work.  Surprisingly, walking does make is swell but not as bad.  When I take my shoes and ankle sock off after walking, my ankle looks so funny.  But I will just elevate it or wrap it up and the swelling eventually goes down.

Everyday does get better.  

Goodbye Cast and Crutches! I can walk again!

Today went wonderfully!!!  I am walking.

Today I discovered that after having a leg in a cast for 8 weeks it gets kind of gross :).  After they took the cast off and I was waiting to see my doctor, I was appalled by the look of my leg.  My hair had managed to grow an inch long.  Dead skin was all over the place.  The scab from the incision was dark and crusty.  The saddest thing was my skinny leg that was about the size of my arm.  It was gross looking.  But I managed to walk that pathetic looking leg right out of the doctors office!  I even took it to the beach.  Now it is shaved, exfoliated, moisturized, and with a new tan.

My doctor told me everything has healed great.  He wants me to walk as much as possible and said that is the only way things will get better.  He told me it will hurt, get read, swell up, and be hard to do, but not to let that stop me from walking.  He even gave me more pain meds because he said he didn't want the pain to interfere with my walking.  He wants me to stop using the crutches completely in 5 days.  He said I could lose them today if I was comfortable with it.  He told me to walk until it hurts too much.  Take a five minute break, then walk some more!  He also said limping does not count.  I was hoping he would let me swim, but he said not yet.  I am not allowed to soak the incision or use any ointments or lotions around the incision because infection is still a risk.  If I am out in the sun I have to keep it covered so it won't burn.

Walking is weird.  Its not really painful.  In fact, the most pain is at my heel.  My ankle just feels really stiff.  Like it hasn't move in 8 weeks :).  Walking on pavement is easy.  Walking in the grass and gravel is a little harder.  Walking in the sand right now is ridiculously hard.  I left the doctors office with my chacos on and a sock on the bad foot.  They were really easy to get on and off, and they don't bother my incision.  When I walk with the crutches I use more of a natural step.  When I don't, I limp.  Tomorrow and over the weekend I plan on walking alot!  I want this to get better and I want to feel active again.

My incision wound looks really good.  There is still a little scab at the top, but I think it looks great.  Its not as big as I remember it being.  I don't mind scars too much.  In fact, the book "Little Bee" has a great quote about scars.  "Scars are beautiful because they are proof we survived"  I thought that was a great quote to go by.  I will survive this!

3 Weeks Down!!!!

Tomorrow will be 3 weeks or 21 Days (sounds better) since my surgery.  I am still on bed rest, and keep my leg elevated for the majority of the day.  The doctor told me at my last visit that if I keep up the good work and keep it elevated I will be released and will able to go to work and move around more.  I am able to get up and down the stairs much more easily and spend more time downstairs than up somedays.  My toes still turn blue and it becomes painful if I am up on my feet too long, but everyday the pain and swelling is less.  It is amazing how much better the cast feels in comparison to the splint.  It is so much lighter and makes crutching around much easier.  However, my cast is already very loose.  I was told this would happen in a few weeks time.  But I called the day after I got my cast because I could stick my hand down my cast where my calf is (great for itching).  I was afraid it might be too loose and I am terrified of hurting my ankle or getting an infection.  The nurse I spoke with told me to go through the weekend to see how it felt.  She said a loose cast can become irritating to the skin and it can be bad if it rubs against the incision.  So Monday I will probably go down for a new cast which sucks because its a 2+ hour drive.  So we are thinking about going to the beach in the morning since we will be driving all the way down to Portland Maine.  There is a beach with sand wheelchairs and I am thinking if I keep my foot elevated the whole time, the beach and sun will do me good?  I am probably a little deficient in Vitamin D since I have been indoors so much the past 3 weeks.  What do you think?  If we go I will let you know how it goes.

Sometimes I get on these "Poor Me" kicks where I think about how much this sucks.  I will watch my husband walk around the house and be able to do things I cannot because I am on crutches.  But I recently have been thinking about all of the people who cannot walk for the rest of their lives, or who always have to rely on crutches or a cane.  I try to keep that in mind and remember that this is only temporary and in a few weeks I will be walking again and life will go back to normal.  I need to start realizing how fortunate I was to have insurance and to be able to have surgery to fix my problem so that I can be active again.  We just had a friend over who was telling me when he broke his leg he had a cast on his entire leg!  That would suck!

Today is my husbands and my first anniversary!  We were married last year in Camden, Maine.  Because I can't really go anywhere we have decided to stay home and we are going to cook some lobsters and have a nice dinner!  We had a lobster bake for our wedding, so I suggested starting a tradition of having lobster for every anniversary.  :)  Sounds like a wonderful tradition to start!

Surgery Day!

My surgery took place at Mercy Hospital in Portland, Maine. My doctor was Dr. Pomeroy. I was really impressed with the hospital facilities and all of the staff there. Everyone was so nice, and everything went very smoothly. My surgery was scheduled for 2:15, so I had to be at the hospital at 12:15. I signed in and was taken back. They immediately had me change and get in bed while they started an IV and began to get me ready. The anesthesiologist came back to discuss what he was going to do. He gave me a nerve blocker in the back of my knee and put me completely out during surgery. Prior to surgery the OR nurse came and spoke with me. I had my contacts out but my glasses on. She let me keep them on in the OR and took them off after introducing me to everyone in the OR. I am blind without my glasses so its nice that they were thoughtful about that. I woke up after surgery in the recovery room with a giant Splint/Cast on my leg. The nurse put my glasses on and gave me some ice. I started to wake up and they gave me crackers and juice. It was about 3:00 and I wasn't allowed to eat all day so the crackers were awesome!

I reacted well to the anesthesia and felt fine after surgery. I wasn't in any pain at all. By 4:00 I was dressed and ready to go home! I had no idea I would feel that fine and be that coherent. I was able to talk on the phone with my sister and mom and even my husband was in shock I was doing so well.

We made it home and picked up some Thai food for dinner. I then made my way upstairs. This was interesting. The best way to get upstairs for the first time for me was to sit on my butt on the stairs, and push myself up each step with my arms and one leg while my husband was holding my leg with the cast. I took my Percocet and was out and slept great! I made sure to set my alarm in the middle of the night to wake up when it was time for me to take more Percocet.