Day: January 15, 2020

Part 5  of my “journal” related to my Lisfranc injury to my left foot. While I started making journal entries about a week ago, this is the point at which I made the decision to post my thoughts and experiences here at Knuckleballs. The early parts were put together from my memories of the early days of this adventure. 

January 15, 2020
Not quite four weeks post-op and one week away from my next post-op appointment.

Things are still going pretty well. Was mentioning to my wife this week that I feel like I’ve been really fortunate with regard to the pain issue. I said it felt like I really haven’t had much at all.

She said she thought maybe I was choosing to ignore some points at which I was feeling it. She’s right, of course.

I’d forgotten how intense the pain could get those first couple of weeks whenever I first lowered my foot from being elevated. It would be just intense pain, I suppose as blood rushed to my lowered extremities. It never lasted more than a few seconds, but those few seconds were incredibly painful.

I can still feel some initial soreness when I lower my foot and it certainly feels better when it’s elevated above my heart (even better with ice on it), but I no longer have that searing pain.

The foot is still swollen and discolored. I’m not concerned about the color, but the swelling concerns me a little. I’m not really sure whether this is normal or not. Hoping it is.

The area just below my toes, in particular, seem to swell up any time I go for any time with my foot not elevated. It was particularly swollen when I got out of bed this morning.

For something like three weeks after the injury, I was sleeping in my recliner, so the foot was elevated all night. Since I’ve been going back to sleeping in bed, though, it’s harder for me to sleep with it elevated. I sleep best on my sides and there’s just no comfortable way to keep it elevated sleeping that way… or at least I haven’t found one.

As a result, I tend to wake up in the morning with my foot laying flat, as normal, on the bed. And it’s sore & swollen until I get out to the recliner, get it up in the air and get an ice pack on it.

Whenever I have symptoms that I’m not sure of, I tend to refer back to the lady’s blog that gave me the idea to write this journal, myself. Sure enough, she wrote at her 4-week point that she was still having swelling when her foot wasn’t elevated for any length of time. For better or worse, that kind of reinforcement from a stranger whose name I don’t even know makes me feel better.

Oh! I finally took a shower yesterday! This probably falls in the “Too Much Information” category, but I hadn’t been able to shower since the injury.

No, I didn’t just let myself get disgustingly filthy during that time. I used the “Full Body Wipes” along with the good old fashioned “sponge bath” process (and washing my hair in the kitchen sink) to keep from being completely offensive. But I was ready to get in the shower.

Having clearance from the surgeon to get the foot wet was the first step, but then you have to figure out how to actually get into the shower, stay there for long enough to wash up, and get out of the shower… all without putting any weight on your injured foot. Try doing all of that on just one foot sometime. It ain’t easy, folks.

Enter the shower seat.

It’s still a little cumbersome getting in and out and sitting while you’re showering is not ideal. But using it makes showering doable at this point and that feels great, not only physically but psychologically. I can’t begin to explain how every little bit of progress toward normalcy helps me from a mental standpoint.

Overall, I’m feeling pretty good. But hey, the Twins signed All-Star free agent third-baseman Josh Donaldson last night! How could I NOT feel good today?!

Part 4 of my “journal” related to my Lisfranc injury to my left foot.

January 8, 2020
First Post-op Check

Finally, two days short of three weeks after surgery, I was getting my “two week” post-op check up. (Yes, it still was bugging me that I had to wait the extra five days.)

It was actually a very full day. My appointment was at 8:45 in the morning, then my wife and I went out for breakfast. That evening was also the family party to celebrate our granddaughter’s second birthday (see the last post, Part 3, for more on that), but I split the day’s events into separate posts.

Getting the splint cut off was refreshing. My foot could breathe!

The foot was still swollen, though. That was disappointing, though I’m not sure if it was just my expectations that were unrealistic or what. I thought I’d get the stitches out, but the surgeon decided not to do that. I tried not to be concerned about that. He did, after all, tell me that the foot looked good.

They applied a light dressing and fitted me for a boot. For some reason, I was expecting to get another full splint put on the foot, since I knew I was still not to let it bear any weight, so hearing him say I was getting a removable boot was exciting!

The boot is not comfortable, at all, but I really only wear it when I’m going to be going outside (which is still almost never) or when I’m going to be trying to stand for a little while (brushing my teeth, doing laundry, preparing food in the kitchen, etc.). I’m still not allowed to put any weight on the foot, but I can use it just to keep my balance when I stand. It’s easier to comply with that limitation if I’m in the boot.

The next appointment, set for two weeks later (January 22) should be when the stitches come out and, I believe, x-rays will be taken and we’ll find out how the actual healing is going.

From the outset, every doctor I’ve talked to has prepared me for a long recovery process. Maybe I just didn’t want to believe it or maybe I thought they were just giving me conservative estimates. But it’s becoming clear to me just how long this is going to take.

Before the injury, I had planned on spending almost all of February and March (even maybe some of January) at the condo in Florida. I don’t like cold weather and when you have a place to stay in Florida, there really aren’t many reasons you shouldn’t spend the winter there.

Of course, after retirement, family is really the ONLY reason for spending time in Iowa during the winter and with two adult children, three grandchildren and an elderly mother all living in Iowa, I’d want to spend some time in the home state. But with direct flights between Cedar Rapids and an airport only a half hour away from the condo, spending the winter in Florida doesn’t mean you can’t also see the family a few times.

That’s not likely to happen this year, though.

Surgeon check ups every couple of weeks for the next month or so and, eventually, physical therapy sessions all mean extended periods in Florida are probably not going to happen for a while.

And then there’s golf.

I don’t know when that’s going to happen again. Sometimes, I even wonder whether it will ever happen. Will I ever be able to swing a golf club the way I need to, with the stress it places on the front foot?

Getting old isn’t a lot of fun. Beyond the family thing, two of the things that have made it at least a bit enjoyable have been going to baseball games and golfing. This year, my annual trip to watch the Minnesota Twins MLB team and their minor leaguers in spring training probably isn’t going to happen and I can’t say with any certainty when, if ever, I’ll be golfing again.

That sucks.

I know, I know. Have to think positive. Some days it’s just easier than others.

Here’s something on the positive side, though – while it certainly is January in Iowa and that means we get snow and ice and cold and all that goes with it, when I’m stuck in my recliner all day, I have absolutely no reason to even look outside to see what the weather’s like. Could be lovely. Could be a blizzard. If not for the occasional audibly strong wind (and family who decide they need to tell me what’s going on), I’d have no way of knowing as long as I don’t look outside.

Part 3 of my “journal” related to my Lisfranc injury to my left foot.

December 25, 2020
Merry Christmas!

After I got home from Florida, I did manage to get out to see my kids and grandkids, but it wasn’t for long. Then it was back to the recliner and stay put.

When Christmas Day rolled around, the plan was to have the family get together at my son & daughter-in-law’s house. I was looking forward to it, but I had some mixed feelings.

Yes, I was already having some cabin fever issues and I was ready to spend a day doing something… anything… other than watching TV. I was looking forward to spending time with the family, but I was also a little uncertain about how I was going to handle being out and about all day. It was only five days post-surgery, after all.

My mom lives about an hour away and my wife and I needed to drive to pick her up, bring her back to the Holiday gathering, then take her home again afterward. In between all of that, of course, would be celebrating the day with the kids and grandkids, opening gifts, having dinner and all that goes with a family Holiday. I don’t mind admitting that it felt a little daunting going in.

I shouldn’t have worried though. It went fine. We piled me into the back seat of my wife’s SUV and off we went to get my mother. The ride didn’t really phase me at all.

The day itself was great. I obviously was limited in how much moving around I could do, but that’s ok.

One thing you figure out when you raise kids is that time just flies by so fast. One day, they’re going to their first day of school and it feels like the next day they’re all grown up and you’re wishing you had found a way to enjoy those things like holidays and birthdays and everything else just a little bit more.

Then you get grandkids and you get a chance to do it all over again and do it right this time. Savor every opportunity you get, even if they aren’t as often as you’d sometimes like and you probably wouldn’t have the energy to keep up with them even if you did have more opportunities.

Anyway, I also made it through the trip to take my mother home and get back home myself. I will confess I was awfully tired by the time I got home, but the effort was well worth it.

Then, two weeks later, I got to do it all over again.

Well, not exactly all over again. But I got out for another family gathering, this time it was to celebrate my granddaughter’s second birthday.

It was a much shorter outing (no trip to get my mother, for one thing… sorry mom). Just pasta and presents over at the son and daughter-in-law’s. And an ice cream cake, of course!

Again, it was really nice to get out for a while and seeing the family makes it all the better.

Other than the birthday party, it was another stretch of the “recliner and TV” routine. Of course, in this age, we also have social media and, being on Facebook and Twitter, that means I’m never really more cut off from society than I choose to be.

With the computer on one side of the recliner and with a smartphone always on my person (in case I do something stupid like fall off my knee-scooter and need to call for help), it’s easy to keep up with the news (notwithstanding how depressing that can be), share the joys and frustrations of being a Twins/Vikings/Hawkeyes fan with those online communities and keep in regular touch with the family.

I also had plenty of time to get an article written on the sad state of the relationship between Major League Baseball and their minor league affiliate organizations for the 2020 Minnesota Twins Prospect Handbook*.

I’ve written an article (and provided a number of photos of Twins minor leaguers) for the authors of that book for several years and I wasn’t sure I was going to get an article done in time for their publication deadline this year. Then, just like that, I found myself with nothing but free time.

Maybe now I should start a novel.

*If you’re interested in reading my article on the MLB/MiLB conflict and/or learning everything you might want to know about the Minnesota Twins minor leaguers, click here to get access to the links to purchase the book. You can pick it up in eBook PDF format or as a hardcopy paperback book.

Part 2 of my “journal” related to my Lisfranc injury to my left foot.

December 20, 2019
Surgery

The medical records staff at the hospital in Florida got my records, including the x-rays and CT scans, into the hands of my personal physical in Cedar Rapids (who then got it to my surgeon) all before my appointment with the surgeon on the Tuesday after I got home to Iowa.

As with the ER doctor, he couldn’t be certain whether I had done the damage that would necessitate hardware installation, so he explained that my surgery could be very short, but I should expect to get the full treatment. And that’s exactly what happened.

He also explained that there were currently two schools of thought on how best to treat this sort of injury. One was to insert a plate with screws to stabilize the middle foot. The other would be some sort of fusion of the bones. He said that he preferred the first approach.

While I appreciated knowing about the options, I honestly wasn’t feeling like delaying things to do more research. I wanted to get on with things. I signed up for the hardware.

The surgery only took a couple of hours and not too long after that, I was headed home (with my wife driving, of course) with a fresh calf-high splint/dressing on my foot and another prescription for Percocet. This one I got filled.

I still wasn’t in much pain, but I suspected that would change once the nerve block they gave me before surgery wore off. They strongly urge you to stay ahead of the pain, rather than waiting until you are writhing before you take something. That sounded like a sensible strategy to me.

The protocol also called for a two-week post-op check-up appointment with my surgeon, which I also had scheduled by the time we left the outpatient surgery center. I noticed, however, that my appointment was set for January 8… just two days short of what would be a full three weeks after surgery.

I’m sure that probably had something to do with the Holidays, but all it meant to me was that I’d have to wait almost a full extra week before getting that splint off.

I knew two weeks sitting (and even sleeping) in a recliner, unable to go much of anywhere or do much of anything unless I was prepared to maneuver stairs, sidewalks and any other obstacles, would be challenging enough. I figured that tacking on an extra week would just add to the frustration.

I figured right. It turns out I’m not always a very patient man. Who knew?

I found out very quickly (before I even left Florida, in fact) that I suck at using crutches. I feel like I’m going to fall on my face every step, especially when I’m not supposed to put any weight at all on the injured foot.

I ordered a knee-scooter that arrived three days after surgery and that’s a game-changer for me. Things that you take for granted like getting up to get a drink from the refrigerator or answer nature’s call were adventures that I dreaded when they meant having to use crutches to get around.

But with the knee-scooter, rolling from room to room is relatively easy and, with the basket attached to the front, allows me to carry drinks, food, etc., to and from my recliner.

I was still bored to death, but at least I could move around home much easier. After a few days, I thought I could sleep semi-comfortably in a bed, rather than sleeping in the recliner. Sometimes it worked, sometimes I had to get out of bed and back to the recliner. That “club” on my foot was just a giant pain in the ass.

Ice packs and elevation remained the rule, of course, and that got old. But the pain (which still was remarkably low most of the time) was almost non-existent when my foot was up. It wasn’t non-existent at all, however, whenever I would lower the foot from the elevated position. The several seconds after doing that was literally the worst pain I had that entire post-op period.

The ice pack thing made no sense to me, however. The splint/dressing on my foot was a good inch thick above the top of my foot, so there was no way the cold was getting through that. When I mentioned that to one of the nurses, she me to apply ice to the back of my knee – that there are nerves that run from there down to your foot and icing behind the knee will help your foot.

I’m sure I looked at her like she was nuts. To say I was skeptical is an understatement. But it worked. So, I not only kept my foot up, but also kept applying ice packs to the back of my knee, above the top of the splint.

That three weeks, though, was long. Very long. Almost intolerably long. I was just glad I wasn’t wearing that thing in the middle of the summer. It was uncomfortably warm, especially for someone who typically can’t sleep without at least one of his bare feet sticking out from under his sheets.

This is where I want to mention how much help my wife was and has continued to be through all of this. Well, not ALL of it… after all, if she had been with me in Florida, maybe she’d have been nice and gone to the bedroom to get my inhaler for me and I could have avoided the whole damn thing! I suppose it’s unrealistic to blame her, though, isn’t it? Guess I’ll have to take responsibility for this myself.

Other than not preventing this, though, she’s been a trooper. Picking up meals and groceries, not to mention having to haul the knee-scooter around every time we go somewhere. I probably don’t want to know what ring tone she’s associated with my name on her cell phone at this point. She has to be tired of the, “hey can you pick me up some…” calls/texts by now. She’s probably more anxious to see me get into a walking boot and able to run my own errands again than I am.

Until then, though, it’s just binge watching TV and relying on her to keep me from wasting away due to lack of food.

I got all the way through all seven seasons of The West Wing again, though. And started watching the Marvel movies in timeline order (rather than the order in which they were released).

It’s going to be a long winter, isn’t it?

If you’ve been a regular reader here at Knuckleballs over the past decade (yes, it’s now been ten years since we launched this site!), you’re used to coming here for sports-related content – usually, but not always, related to the Minnesota Twins and/or their Class A minor league affiliate, the Cedar Rapids Kernels.

It hasn’t all been about baseball here, though. Sometimes, I’ve ventured into Vikings or Hawkeyes material. Occasionally, even something entertainment related.

For the past year or so (maybe longer), however, those posts have become infrequent (to put it mildly). I was actually surprised to discover I hadn’t posted anything here since last April’s Game of Thrones Poll article.

Obviously, I don’t write as often as I used to and, when I do, the feature pieces I do are generally posted at TwinsDaily.com. I may start posting thoughts here again this baseball season. We’ll see.

But, with apologies to Monty Python’s Flying Circus, “Now for something completely different…”

Over three weeks ago, I had surgery on a broken left foot. Having a lot of time on my hands, I’ve spent a lot of time watching sports on TV, binge-watching old shows (did you know Hulu has the complete Mary Tyler Moore Show series for streaming now?) and movies on Netflix and other streaming services and browsing web sites on the computer.

Last week, I was doing some research on my particular condition/surgery and came across a blog/journal written by a woman who had pretty much the same injury and surgery. She had her injury something like six years earlier and decided to write about her recovery experience. Since she did a pretty good job of making regular, quasi-weekly entries, there was a lot of material to read, but I got through all of it before heading to bed.

By the time I finished reading it, I was almost sorry that I had.

Yes, I found value in it. I could see that the entries she posted for the day of her surgery and the first couple of weeks post-surgery very closely tracked my own experiences, both physical and psychological. That was reassuring, to a large degree.

I probably should have stopped there, but I didn’t. I kept reading and the more I read about what the next several months of my life are likely to feel like, the more depressed I got. I questioned whether I was really prepared for dealing with what’s coming up.

The next day, while watching NFL playoff football games and some college basketball, I re-read some of her blog entries and, in doing so, it felt like just going through the exercise of writing about her experiences was somewhat therapeutic for her.

So, I decided that I’m going to do the same thing.

I’m starting a little bit later in the game than she did, since I’m already a month post-injury and over three weeks post-surgery, but I decided I could easily go back and recreate the process since the memories are still very fresh.

As I type this, I don’t even know if I’ll ever post any of this – or even show it to anyone, for that matter. I do already have a web site, Knuckleballsblog.com, where I used to post a lot of baseball-related articles. It has gone virtually dormant since I’ve cut way back on my writing and what I do write usually gets posted on TwinsDaily.com, instead. But I can decide all of those details later.

I guess, if you’re reading this, I must have decided to put it out there, right? Also, if I do post this somewhere, I’m probably going to include pictures we’ve taken along the way. So if that kind of thing grosses you out, I’m sorry.

With that, let’s get started.

December 11, 2019
The Fall

Whenever someone I know sees me for the first time hobbling around with my foot in whatever splint or boot I happen to be wearing, they inevitably ask, “What did you do to your foot?”

That’s natural. I just wish I could tell them.

Of course, I can tell them I broke it and I can even go into some detail concerning which bones were involved, but I have no explanation for how it happened. Not a good one anyway.

I had decided to spend three weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas down in Ft. Myers, Florida, staying at a condo that we bought last May. I flew down there on November 30 and was scheduled to return to Cedar Rapids on December 20.

By the time I got there, I had developed a bit of a chest cold or bronchitis. I tried to fight through it, but eventually went to see a doctor at an acute care center not far from the condo. They gave me a couple of prescriptions and sent me on my way.

After a few days, I was feeling like things were progressing fine on that front.

On the evening of Wednesday, December 11, though, things took a nasty turn.

I was sitting in the recliner in the TV room of the condo, watching TV, and decided my breathing was becoming a little labored. I have a bit of asthma, so when I get bronchitis, some shortness of breath is not unusual. I just take a puff from an albuterol inhaler I keep handy and I’m usually good to go.

This particular evening, however, my inhaler was in my bedroom. So, I stood up from the chair and took about five steps in the direction of my bedroom.

Three things happened then. I think I remember the order, but they happened in very quick succession and, in hindsight, I can’t be 100% certain my memory is accurate. In any event, I got dizzy, my vision faded pretty much to black, and I heard a sharp “POP.”

I do know what the fourth thing in the sequence was, though. It was my landing on the bamboo wood floor.

I knew right away I had broken my foot. I’m not sure how I knew that, exactly. After all, the only broken bone I’d ever experienced in my life to that point was a collarbone I broke playing football when I was 13 years old.

I spent a couple of minutes sitting on the floor, taking stock of my situation, comparing my left foot with my right and confirming the left was already starting to swell. I wasn’t in much pain at all, but I realized that was likely to change very soon.

I scooted on my ass back into the TV room where my cell phone was. I knew, I think, that I needed to call 9-1-1 and get to an Emergency Room. But I didn’t do that right away. Still a bit uncertain about what exactly had happened, I called my wife… who was back in Iowa.

To my credit (or perhaps more accurately, to her credit), I did call 9-1-1 very shortly thereafter.

I scooted again on my ass out through the hall and to the front door to unlock it and wait for the ambulance. I also realized I wasn’t exactly dressed in anything close to a presentable manner, so I then scooted into the bedroom and managed to pull at least pull on a clean t-shirt. Then, back on my ass, I scooted out to the door again.

The EMTs were great and managed to get me loaded into a mobile chair. They slowly carried me down the outside stairs from the second-story condo unit, then they transferred me to a gurney, loaded me into the ambulance and off we went.

I still really wasn’t in much pain and was able to carry on pretty normal conversations with the EMTs all the way to the hospital. Once there, I was moved into a room in the ER, where I spent the next four hours or so.

Up front, I just want to say that literally everyone I dealt with at the hospital was incredibly nice, while still very professional. Doctors, nurses, technicians… everybody… treated me like a person and seemed to really enjoy the work they did with patients. Maybe it was because they were used to dealing with patients in all manner of pain and discomfort, and I was being relatively accepting of my situation. But I chose to just believe they were all genuinely nice people.

They brought an x-ray machine in, but when the results were available, the doctor felt I needed a CT scan as well. He said he believed I probably had what’s called a Lisfranc injury, but they would need the CT scan to confirm it.

They had to take me to another area for the CT scan, but again the employees pushing me around on the gurney were really pleasant, as were the people doing the CT.

After those results were back, the doctor indicated he had spoken with a specialist and, while even the CT results weren’t absolutely conclusive, they were almost certain I had the Lisfranc break and would be needing surgery… and soon.

Lisfranc, he explained, was a middle foot injury where the metatarsals meet. In my case, at the juncture of my first and second metatarsals. It also generally includes ligament damage and, if so, it means you’re going to need some hardware screwed in there to stabilize the middle foot.

They wrapped up my foot and calf in a splint and bandages and discharged me with a referral to a local orthopedic surgeon that I was supposed to make an appointment with the following week. They also gave me a prescription for Percocet, for pain, but I didn’t even get that filled. I simply wasn’t having all that much pain.

Like I said, this all took place the night of December 11 and I was’t scheduled to return to Iowa until December 20. We talked about how you really don’t want to have surgery done by one surgeon and see a different one for follow-up (which makes perfect sense), so I obviously wanted to have the surgery done back in Cedar Rapids. Although, I’d be lying if I said the thought of using the injury as an excuse to spend all winter and spring in Florida didn’t run through my mind.

Once the “stay in Florida” option was pretty much nixed, the next decision was whether or not I would wait until after I returned home on the 20th, as scheduled, to see a surgeon.

I talked to the nurse at my personal physician’s office about getting a referral. That part was easy. But we were coming up on the Holidays and the odds of getting an appointment and surgery scheduled in anything resembling a prompt manner seemed long.

While I was still having that internal debate, I ended up back at the ER the following night.

I’d read my discharge information thoroughly and there were instructions to return to the ER if I noticed that my toes got cold, turned pale or turned blue. And that afternoon, I could see the tips of my toes (the only part of my foot visible) were distinctly turning darker.

So, I called Lyft and off I went back to the ER.

That turned out to be an unnecessary trip, though. My toes were turning dark for a very logical reason… my entire foot was beginning to show significant bruising. That included my toes.

I admit I spent those first couple of days being really depressed. I was alone, 1500 miles from home, with a broken foot and no idea what was coming next.

By Friday morning, I’d had a revelation.

I don’t know why I even considered sticking around Florida until my scheduled return flight on the 20^th, but the fog in my mind finally cleared that morning and it became clear to me that I needed to get home as soon as possible.

My mental state was better, as well. I recognized that so many people have much more serious issues than a broken bone. For me, it would just be a matter of time – and perhaps some surgery – before I’d be as good as new. We all know a lot of people who are not as fortunate.

Luckily, I was able to get on a flight home early Saturday morning, a full six days earlier than planned. That allowed me to get an appointment with the Orthopedic surgeon for Tuesday, the 17^th and surgery scheduled for Friday the 20^th… the date I would have flown home if I’d stuck to my original schedule.

The injury and premature return home meant I didn’t get much of the condo cleaned up before I left, so I guess I’ll have to deal with that when I get down there next.

Unfortunately, that won’t be as quickly as I’d hoped.