About a month ago, I had surgery on my foot. When I was a child my feet were usually too big for my shoes, which caused my big toe to bend inward. Where the joint bent, a bone deposit grew and kept growing. Last winter, I went skiing and since the boots don’t give like shoes do, my foot was basically crushed in the boot. After a night of skiing, blisters formed and popped leaving a sock caked in blood. Two weeks later, I tried to go ice skating and it hurt so bad I took the boots off after about 5 minutes.
After talking to the doctor, he said that he could fix it and if I didn’t get it fixed, it would likely get worse. Fixing it involved cutting the bone growth out, breaking the toe, removing all the ligaments and cartilage from the knuckle, drilling a pin from the outside into the bone, and putting a screw in there to help fuse the bones and keep it all together.
The first week after the surgery was hell. I slept most of the time with the help of some pain pills, and it was mostly a blur except I remember it being really uncomfortable to sleep with a surgical boot, which acts like a caste. After the first week, I started taking the boot off to sleep and actually got a good night’s sleep. Since then it has progressively healed. I have two more weeks to go with this boot and my right foot will be healed. After that, I need to have the left foot done, which will start the whole thing over again.
What an ordeal… but it’ll make it possible for me to do the things that I like to do, namely hiking & skiing. Anything that requires the use of any type of boot will now be a lot easier to deal with. Hopefully, this will help make it easier to meet some of my other health goals.