Part 6 of my “journal” related to my Lisfranc injury to my left foot.
January 22, 2020
2nd post-op checkup
Just short of five weeks after the Lisfranc injury surgery, it was time for my second post-op visit and I’d categorize it as a pretty encouraging check-up.
I didn’t see the surgeon at all at this visit, but a nurse practitioner checked me out and said everything looks good. They removed my stitches and replaced them with Steristrips, so at least the foot looks a lot better than it did with the stitches still crisscrossing the incisions. And no more keeping it wrapped in a dressing, which is nice.
It still amazes me how different the foot feels when it’s been elevated and iced recently compared to when it has been a while, such as first thing in the morning or after being out and about for a few hours.
I still have two more weeks to go before they’ll let me put any weight on the surgically repaired foot. They’ll do x-rays at the next check-up in two weeks (February 5) and then we’ll have a better feel for how the healing is really going. They said that’s also likely to be when I’ll be released to start Physical Therapy.
They also mentioned that the February 5 appointment will be my last appointment with the surgeon’s office until two months later.
Two months? Hmmm… I wonder what I could do with that time.
It took me just a few seconds to pose the question, “Is it possible to start Physical Therapy here and then continue it somewhere else… for example, somewhere in Florida?”
It turns out, while they understandably don’t want you getting surgery one place and then all the follow-up appointments halfway across the country with a surgeon who didn’t perform your procedure, they aren’t nearly as particular about where you do your PT.
So, the bottom line is, while nothing is certain and I’m not going to make any firm plans until we find out how things are going in two weeks, do you remember that annual trip to Fort Myers that coincides with the Twins’ Spring Training that I had pretty much resigned myself to not happening this spring? Well, it’s no longer a foregone conclusion that we won’t make it down there.
No, it won’t be easy. My wife and I (and her dog) drive down and back when we go down for the trips where we plan to stay awhile.
I haven’t driven since the injury, but I don’t see that as a real problem (I might be biased). I’ve been released to drive for a while, but I haven’t done it. Driving is the easy part. I could do that right now.
The challenge is that, at some point, I’d have to stop the car, get out and get inside my destination… and for now, I would have to do all that without putting any weight on the injured foot. I’m still not the greatest on crutches, so I haven’t been anxious to head out on my own anywhere I’d need to use them… which is everywhere.
But once I’m quasi-mobile and able to at least partially bear weight on the foot in a boot, I’m thinking driving really shouldn’t be an issue.
The decision, as I see it, could come down to whether I’m still having a lot of swelling. Driving somewhere for lunch is one thing. Driving for a couple days straight, though, would probably not make elevating my foot very easy to accomplish with any regularity.
Still, if there’s at least a chance of getting to Fort Myers for some of February/March, I’m going to try to figure out a way to get it done. Since we’d drive down and we have the condo to stay at, there are no flight or hotel reservations to worry about. We can just decide to go and then go. (OK, it’s not really quite that easy, but it doesn’t take long.)
Just the possibility has me feeling better about things, anyway.
Being down there wouldn’t be as enjoyable as it usually is, I’m sure. Golf probably isn’t going to be happening. (I’m still worried about whether I’ll be able to swing a club without pain.) Walking on the beachfront probably will be limited. I’m not going to be walking around doing a lot of shopping (dang).
And then there will be Physical Therapy which probably won’t be the most enjoyable part of my day. Still, if you were going to have to do PT for a few weeks, would you rather do it somewhere that you may still need to drive through snow to get there or somewhere that you could try to work in your PT appointment before or after watching baseball?
So, you see my point, right?
As for the current status of the foot, itself, I may have jinxed myself by talking about how little pain I’d been having in the foot all along, from the time I broke it all the way through surgery and afterward.
About a week ago, I started feeling more pain in the top of the foot almost any time I didn’t have the foot elevated and on ice. It got to the point where sometimes it would even wake me up in the middle of the night. Some nights, I could sleep in my bed for a few hours, but then wake up with the burning pain and would end up going out to the kitchen, getting an ice pack and getting a few more hours of sleep in the recliner with my foot elevated.
The elevation, ice pack and maybe a couple of Tylenol usually eased the burning sensation and I’d be good for the day as long as I didn’t go too long without elevating and icing.
This hasn’t been as much of an issue for the past three days or so, though, so I’m hoping it was just a phase.
What I’ve found interesting is that what pain I get seems to move around. More often than anywhere else, it’s on the top of my foot where the incision was, but other times it may be on the outside of my foot or in my toes or my ankle. One evening, I was even feeling it all the way up in my calf.
It still hasn’t been anything I couldn’t deal with, sometimes with a couple of Tylenol, sometimes not even bothering with that. Just kind of odd how the pain moves around. All those nerves running through our legs and feet are inter-related, I guess.
Speaking of nerves, the top of my foot is really sensitive, even when it’s not being a literal pain. I’m wondering if having the stitches still in has been causing that. If so, maybe that hypersensitivity will back off now that the stitches are out.
It’s been a pretty good week. I’ve now finished watching the entire Star Trek: The Next Generation series and have moved on to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I may need to move on to something non-Trekkie after I get through streaming that, though.