Remember the good old days? Way back a couple of weeks ago when the biggest health-related concern I had was wondering if recovery from Lisfranc surgery on my broken left foot would keep me from being able to golf much longer?
It seems like forever ago. Things have certainly changed in a hurry for all of us. Talk about getting whiplash in terms of what’s really important.
So, this journal is going to expand its scope, at least for this post. Beyond that, who knows?
My last journal post mentioned I had made it to Florida, attended some spring training games, found a Physical Therapist to work with during the month of March and ended with a comment about how it had been a pretty good week.
Was that really only a little over two weeks ago?
Let’s summarize what’s happened since then.
The good news is that the foot is doing fine. The physical therapy I received in Ft. Myers was helpful. Walking in the pool a couple of times felt wonderful. At this point, even having ceased the PT sessions in favor of being much more conservative in terms of staying home, I can tell my foot is doing great. It’s gotten to where I can walk around pain-free, though I don’t move as quickly as I used to.
Even the stairs are something I can handle without pain. I did feel a pull in the calf muscle of my “healthy” leg while going down some stairs yesterday, though. I guess the physical therapists who kept insisting I needed to stretch the muscles in my calves every day knew what they were talking about, after all.
There’s still some swelling in the foot, so I continue to ice & elevate at times. But I haven’t even used the cane to walk for over a week. While I know it will be several more months before the foot is 100% again, I’m feeling really good about where I’m at with the recovery.
That’s about the end of the good news. After all, even the chances of keeping my April 14 check-up with my surgeon seem like a long shot right now.
I’m not sure we ever got a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle put together as quickly as we did while virtually locking ourselves into the condo.
The plan was to stay in Florida until sometime the first week of April. With the speed at which we went from attending baseball games to working on a jigsaw puzzle while being virtually self-quarantined in the condo, however, it became evident that staying in Florida would risk being forced to stay there by health and/or circumstances for a very long time.
One benefit of driving to Ft. Myers, rather than flying, is that you can go from “planning to stay a month” to “let’s get the hell out of here” in no more time than it takes to pack up the car.
Of course, even driving that 1,500 miles or so held some risk. How healthy would it be to stay at hotels for even one night? How healthy would it be to stop for gas… assuming gas stations would even be open?
In the end, the decision was to drive relatively straight through, leaving Ft. Myers just before noon on Friday, March 20, choosing a route that would hopefully dodge a pretty lengthy line of potential thunderstorms expected to stretch across the southeast that evening.
Outside of a brief one-hour catnap about 3 am and another couple hours of sleep at a rest stop in the pre-dawn hours Saturday morning, the plans to drive straight through, while sharing driving responsibilities, went forward without much of a hitch. Of course, every stop for gas also called for hand-washing/sanitizing and every meal was purchased at a drive-thru window, but by early afternoon on Saturday, I was taking a much-needed shower at home.
Once home, I flipped on the TV, then looked at my calendar, mentally making a note of the date 14 days into the future, April 4, which would constitute two weeks after completing the trip. If I can get to that date healthy, I’ll feel like I survived that trip without contracting the coronavirus while in Florida.
In the meantime, it’s two weeks of pretty much “shelter-in-place.” Maybe an occasional meal from a drive-thru restaurant, but for the most part, there’s really no reason for me to go outside other than to take out the garbage or go for a walk… and my “walks” are still pretty short, anyway.
The toughest part is not seeing the kids and grandkids for another extended time. After all, it felt like I had just emerged from “exile” caused by having to stay home following the foot surgery before I left for Florida and now I’m right back in isolation again.
But I survived the post-op months and I’ll survive a couple (or maybe a few) weeks longer, if it means doing my part to make sure we all get through this thing without completely overwhelming our medical facilities and killing thousands (millions?) of people (a large proportion of them likely to be medical heroes) in the process.
I’m in my 60s, with a history of asthma that makes getting through your normal variety of flu a bit of a challenge at times and some seasonal allergies, but otherwise, I’m pretty healthy, so I’m not overly concerned.
That doesn’t keep me from “wondering” every time I blow my nose or cough just a little bit. Is it just allegies… just my normal asthma cough? Or is this the start of something worse?
I’ve got a digital thermometer that I simply press to a temple to get a reading and I admit that I’m doing that at least two or three times a day, even though I haven’t felt anything close to a fever.
It’s the wondering that is toughest, for me, anyway.
I want all of you and everyone you care about to get through this thing safely and I especially want medical workers and everyone else who doesn’t have the option of self-isolation to have a fighting chance to stay healthy, as well.
So, take the precautions you can and hopefully, we’ll all get back to focusing on things like baseball in a few weeks/months.
Part 9 of my “journal” related to my Lisfranc injury to my left foot. If you’re coming late to the party and want to go back and read how I got to this point, click the links below.
If you look at the updated picture of my feet somewhere on this page, you may not, at first, notice much different about it in comparison to the pictures that were included in the past couple of posts. The left foot has a visible scar (though it is fading some) and the foot remains a bit swollen.
Scar is fading some. The swelling here doesn’t look too bad, but this was taken after icing for a while. It gets pretty puffy pretty much any time the foot is not elevated.
But check out the background… it’s not the same as prior pictures. This photo was taken in the TV room at the condo in Fort Myers, Florida!
After being convinced that the Lisfranc injury and subsequent surgery was going to mean no trip to Florida this spring, it turned out to simply delay those plans. By the time February came to a close, I was enjoying the (relative) warmth of the Sunshine State.
I got 7 physical therapy sessions completed in Cedar Rapids before hitting the road for Florida. They were focused mostly on range of motion and massage, but by the time we were finished, I was off the crutches and only using the walking boot in situations that were going to involve standing/walking for extended periods. For the most part, however, I was able to get by with comfortable walking shoes that allowed me to significantly loosen the laces of the left shoe to fit the swollen left foot.
While I’ve been able to hobble around for short distances, I’ve still been using a cane any time a walk of any significant distance is involved. Being up and about for extended periods will cause some aching, but otherwise there’s very little pain involved with normal activities.
The one exception that remains is the significant twinge that occurs any time I try to put weight on the balls of the left foot.
I also found a physical therapist to pick up the PT sessions while I’m in Florida and I’ve now completed two of those sessions. They are continuing massage and range of motion work, but are adding exercises related to balance. I was a little surprised to discover that I’ve lost the ability to maintain much, if any, balance on my left foot. Still, I can tell I’ve made a lot of progress.
The therapist is encouraging me to make use of the pools at the condo complex. Walking in the pool is, apparently, one of the best exercises I can do. The water not only significantly reduces the amount of weight the foot has to support, but the water pressure also minimizes the swelling that exercise otherwise would cause.
I’ve only gotten to the pool once in the first week in Florida, but I can verify that the walking felt really good.
Getting some use out of my cane even while sitting and watching a baseball game. When Rick Dobnak (father of Twins pitcher Randy Dobnak) took this shot of me, I was either concentrating hard on the game or getting in a quick nap. I’m not saying which.
Why only once? Well, the temperatures in the morning have been a little cool, so that’s a good excuse. But the reality is that I’ve spent quite a bit of time going to Minnesota Twins spring training games. That’s a big reason I come down here, after all.
Walking, in general, really doesn’t cause much discomfort, especially if I’m wearing shoes or walking on carpet.
Naturally, the condo has all bambo wood flooring. I found, though, that wearing sandals alleviates any pain. So I bought a new pair of sandals with the velcro adjustable band that goes across the middle of the foot. (The adjustability is necessary because my left foot is virtually always swollen at least a little bit. Sometimes more than a little.)
The sandals led to a new discovery.
The upper side of the sole (that the foot rests on) is embossed with the Reebok logo where my heel rests. And that felt like little tiny pins sticking into my heel whenever I wore them on bare feet.
It took me a while to figure out why that was the case.
Then I remembered that, when my splint was removed a couple of weeks after surgery, my foot was essentially shedding the top layer of dead skin that included any natural calluses on the sole and heel of my foot. The result, I guess, is that the sole and (especially) heel of the injured foot has new and extremely sensitive skin.
There really is something new with this thing every week.
Oh, speaking of new things… guess what my physical therapist told me to do! If you guessed “golf,” you’re absolutely right!
Well, she didn’t EXACTLY tell me to do that, but it was close enough that I chose to hear it that way.
First time swinging a golf club since before the injury. It felt really, really good.
I mentioned I was looking forward to being able to golf again and she suggested that I start going to the driving range now and doing some chipping and other easy swings with my irons, so I get used to the shifting of weight on uneven ground, etc.
That’s what she said. But what I heard was, “You can start golfing now.”
Anyway, it took me less than 24 hours from that appointment before I was at the driving range, swinging my 9-iron and 6-iron nice and easy. And it felt great! I hit about 15 or 20 balls with each club and had no pain. That left me with about five balls left from the bucket.
I couldn’t resist. Out came the Big Bertha driver.
Five drives, with a very easy swing. Four down the middle and one sliced. Heck, that’s a LOT better ratio than I’ve had with two healthy feet the past couple of decades!
This has all just been a long way of saying this has been a pretty good week!
Part 7 of my “journal” related to my Lisfranc injury to my left foot. I’ve come to realize some people may be discovering this journal late in the game, so to speak. So, I’m going to add links to the prior entries. I’ll try to remember to keep doing this with future posts.
Do physical therapists just really like to cause pain? I think almost anyone who has undergone physical therapy has wondered about that at some point. They all deny it, of course. But would you really expect them to admit it? Of course not. They’re all going to go with the standard bit about how they like helping people.
Maybe. But I’m not totally convinced. I have to give them credit though, because they’re SO friendly and empathetic while they make you use muscles you haven’t used for weeks.
Still, while it may be true that physical therapists are sadists, by nature, that doesn’t mean that what they do isn’t important and effective when it comes to getting through the post-surgical process.
I started physical therapy on Monday, February 10, and have had four sessions. It’s been pretty remarkable how much progress I feel like I’ve made in just over a week. It may have felt like I was just doing a few relatively easy exercises that stretched foot muscles in seemingly innocuous ways, but there’s no question that those exercises have been effective.
I started the week with limited range of motion in the injured foot and a fair amount of pain twinging through the foot whenever I placed direct weight on it. By the time the week wrapped up, I was wearing a shoe, instead of the walking boot, and while I was still using crutches for balance any time I had to take more than a few steps, I was no longer having much pain except when I’d put most of my weight on the balls of my foot.
The first couple of PT sessions were mostly about working on range of motion exercises and those went pretty well. The most challenging of those was simply tring to scrunch my toes. Sitting down, lay a towel on a hard floor surface (no rug or carpet), then put your foot on the towel and try to scrunch your toes enough to gather the towel. If you’re doing it right, you essentially pull and gather the towel down from the top. Anyway, it’s tougher than it sounds.
Check it out! Wearing a shoe on the left foot! Also doing some “stepping” at physical therapy.
By the third session, on Friday, I was also getting some time in on a step machine and that went real well. No pain to speak of at all during or after an 8-minute “ride.”
The fourth session, on Monday, was focused on re-learning to walk properly. Heal-arch-toe. Again, it’s something we take for granted until we haven’t done it for a while and it still causes some pain to do it, especially when I push off with the toes. It’s a lot easier if I keep my foot flat and support most of my weight on my heel and the outside of my foot, but doing that for any length of time just makes my knee sore, which isn’t a good thing either short-term or long-term.
Bottom line, I feel like I’m making progress. It’s obviously going to be a while before the foot feels anywhere close to normal, though.
I still wake up with swelling in the morning and the same is the case after any extended period of being out and about, so ice packs and elevation are still the norm. But I’m pretty much sleeping through the night (at least as much as I usually did, even before the injury).
I’ve also more or less retired the knee scooter. Most of the time, I just hobble around home from room to room, but I’m also starting to get accustomed to using a cane. It felt a little odd at first, since I was using my left hand, but then my physical therapist pointed out I was using the cane wrong and should be using my right hand. I felt kind of stupid, having to be told how to use a cane properly, but he wasn’t wrong… it’s much easier this way.
So, the scooter is semi-retired, along with the shower seat. After not being able to shower for the first few weeks after the injury, getting out of the splint and having the OK to shower at all was a blessing, both for myself and anyone who had to be near me, I’m sure. But not being able to stand in the shower was awkward, at best. Using the seat got the job done, but as soon as I felt like I could put enough weight on the injured foot to stand upright long enough to get a shower in, I stopped using that seat.
At 8 weeks, the scar is looking better and the foot isn’t too swollen when I first get out of bed in the morning. It looks even more “normal” after a half hour of ice and elevation.This picture was taken about 30 minutes after the other 8-weeks photo, after making coffee, taking a standing shower and getting dressed for the day. Not a lot different, but certainly more swelling and discoloration.
Showering is one thing, however, that results in considerable soreness and swelling. That means I really need to plan ahead for the showers. I need to make sure I have an hour or so post-shower to ice and elevate the foot before going out.
Since I have to wear a shoe on the injured foot for physical therapy, I started to get into the habit of not wearing the walking boot, even when I go out. I may have overdone that over the weekend, though. I was out and about on Saturday for several hours and ended up really sore and swollen by the time I got home. Lesson learned. I was back in the boot on Sunday and Monday when I was going out.
I’ve got a couple more PT sessions set up for this week, then the plan is to set sail (in a manner of speaking) for Florida sometime the last week of February. I’ll probably need to find a physical therapist in Fort Myers, as well, to continue the torture routine while I’m down there, but I’m hoping I’ll be wrapped up with that by the end of March.
I’m still concerned about all the swelling and discoloration that comes back any time I’m not elevating the foot and I really wish the pain any time I put weight on the balls of my left foot would subside, but I guess it will just take more time, right?
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.
Two days short of five weeks after surgery. Stiches out & replaced by Steristrips.
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.
Do you suppose Physical Therapists in Fort Myers make appointments on the beach?
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.
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.
There’s still swelling and discoloration, but as long as I keep the left foot elevated and regularly iced, there’s very little pain. What there is would more accurately be called soreness than 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!
My foot can breathe again! No, it wasn’t pretty when they took the splint and dressing off, but it felt really good. It felt even better to find out they weren’t going to put another splint on.
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.
Binging update: Now partway through the final season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Add that to the entire West Wing series, 22 Marvel movies, The Mandalorion series, and a few other movies and several other TV series episodes. And that’s all in addition to NFL playoffs and Iowa Hawkeyes basketball.
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.
If it looks to you like this foot will need surgery, you’d be correct. This is what it looked like at my pre-op exam 3 days before surgery.
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?
Xrays taken after surgery. One plate with three screws. Apparently, the plan is to leave the hardware in there permanently, unless they give me trouble. I haven’t yet asked how to define “trouble.” Not sure I want to know.
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.
After surgery, it’s back to the wrapped and padded 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).
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
Don’t let all the joyous Holiday decorations fool you. This condo was about to become the scene of my (literal) downfall
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.
The injured left foot doesn’t look TOO bad, right? At this point, in the ER, I was holding out hope that maybe it was just a sprain. Yeah, right. (By the way, that bruised toenail was not due to this fall… it was from slamming that big toe into a cement step at the same condo about five months earlier.)
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.
Back at the condo after the trip to the ER, in the recliner that I was essentially confined to until I left for the airport a couple of days later.
I don’t know why I even considered sticking around Florida until my scheduled return flight on the 20th, 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 17th and surgery scheduled for Friday the 20th… 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.
