Well, We've Been Having Fun

The past couple of weeks I've been having some pains,especially in my right ankle area. We had been working pretty hard with the PT and I had gotten some brand spankin' new orthotics, so there were a lot of reasons to be sore. So to fix that, we backed off the PT a bit and we went back to Gus to adjust the orthotics.

Well, Friday, we got the new orthotics in and they felt fantastic! The others were just too much of an adjustment all at once, so we'll work into those. Saturday we went about our business and I was able to walk pretty well with a pretty good reduction in pain all day long and even puttered around the house with some stuff well into the night (by my standards anyway).

The came Sunday.

I woke up and stuff was hurtin' and hurtin' bad. I tried to stand up. Bad idea. I just couldn't. In fact, it hurt to even move my right foot. So even to just go the short distance to the bathroom, I was back to using the wheelchair. And just getting to the chair was a painful experience.

So Sunday I stayed in bed and we babied that right foot, applying a lot of ice packs and heat.

Monday rolls around and it ain't no better, so another day in bed with ice, heat, and my laptop to I could get some work done.

Tuesday I had a PT appointment and an appointment with my surgeon. The PT appointment was canceled since I couldn't do anything and off to the doc we went.

He took some x-rays, and MRI, and blood work. Then he started talking about the possibility of another infection flare-up and, what scares me the most, removing some of the metal. So we got the x-rays (they do that there in his office) and they looked fine. We went downstairs and did the blood work. We couldn't do the MRI until yesterday (Wednesday) morning.

The MRI at Austin Radiological (ARA) was a BIG disappointment. The techs tried and tried, but I have so much metal in my feet, that the image was completely obscured and totally useless. We were sent home empty handed while they info'd the doc.

Later yesterday afternoon, we get a call from ARA saying Dr. Dalton had ordered a CT scan and asked how soon can we could get to one of their locations. Luckily these folks are all over the place and we could get to the local one very soon. We got there and did the CT with no problem.

This morning I wake up and the swelling on the right had gone down dramatically and so had a lot of the ankle pain. Even the tendon area felt better, but that changed pretty quickly when I stood up the first time. But still, it was not as bad as it had been. So we get our act together and head off to see Dr. D. again...

* The blood work showed no signs of an infection.

* The x-ray was, as I said, completely normal (for me anyway).

* The CT scan showed that everything looked completely normal as well.

So it looks like I just have a ticked off tendon. The achilles got aggravated somehow and I may have even gotten as far as developing some level of tendonitis. Without the MRI they can't be 100% sure what is going on, but there is no infection and everything else looks stable.

So my right foot is back in a boot to stabilize the tendon and keep me from messing it up more. I may get that swapped out for some kind of brace that Gus can make that I can wear with my tennies. I have to keep that tendon as stabilized as possible for the next 4 to 6 weeks. I can stand on it but I just can't move it or let it do much, if any, work.

In the meantime, Scott will do all the PT work he can on the left foot and right ankle to keep them loose so we don't lose any more progress than necessary. Also, he can do this thing where we get a prescription filled for a 10% hydrocortisone cream and he can use his sonogram equipment to infuse that directly into my tendon. It is not as effective as injections of steroids, but it can help with the healing and pain and doesn't involve the painful shots into the tendon. I like that!

So that's where things stand now. It's a bit of a setback, but I have a lot of smart, good people working on getting it resolved.