Third Visit to TOC

Today I was another checkup. My foot is still too swollen. Dr. D did remove the tape wrapped around toes 3 and 4 and those toes now feel really weird to touch. My third toe has a little twist at the end but they've never told me anything is broken in it. The 4th toe was the dislocated one so they had taped it to the 3rd toe for stability.

He said I could now ice my foot and wrap the ace bandage a bit tighter to help reduce the swelling. He wants to see me again on Monday. My appt is at 7:30am! Yikes!!

I asked him to contact the Dr. B who had seen me in ER just to chat and see what that doctor had to say about my foot in it's original trauma. So he was cooperative, called the Alabama Orthopedics in B'ham, talked to a secretary who said the doctor was out for the afternoon. He asked if he was in surgery -- "no just out". So then he asked if there was anyway he could talk to him or have him call him back; that he was with a patient. Anyway, the doc from B'ham did call back within about 5 minutes. But after D got off the phone with the secretary, he said "Well, I guess when you're older you can take the afternoon off". He probably has worked very hard since he's arrived in Huntsville. I found out he has been in Huntsville for 4 months. I questioned his newness and he said "Well, I've been a doctor for 7 years, 5 years of residency at Mayo, and 2 years of fellowship at Duke, all orthopedics. Then he said "And since I've been in Huntsville I've done more foot surgeries than any other orthopedic surgeon." And then he said, "You gotta start somewhere."

I also talked about the pros/cons of surgery now, surgery never, surgery later. He said the x-ray did show one bone displaced so it could heal up fine, it could bother me at the top of my foot, or it could just not heal up very strong. If it was strong and just bothered me on the top of my foot, he could do surgery, shave off the top part of the bone sticking up. If it wasn't strong, he'd have to re-break the bone with a saw (yikes!), pin it, and then wait for it to heal again. Basically, he wants to make the bones look correct on an x-ray and then you can trust that it will heal correctly.

I asked about full recovery. He wouldn't commit to that. He said it depends on the person. He said it takes 3 months for the bones to heal, but could be a year to where I'm back to normal. My therapy would be drawing the alphabet with your foot. make an a, make a b, make a c, etc. He said you might find that you walk and something bothers you a bit but you just learn to live with it. He has said there is no ankle injury, no ligament damage, and the muscles will just heal up fine. It's just a waiting game right now.

He does surgeries on Tues/Thurs, so I suspect if things look good next Monday, he'll do the surgery on Tues but he didn't exactly say that. He's just kind of amazed the swelling is taking a long time to go down. I guess it just takes time. They've told me to keep it elevated to my heart or nose. I've kept it up but maybe not that high all the time. That's pretty high when I'm sitting in my chair at work. It's not so bad when you're lying down in a bed.

If the surgery does go through, he'll put the pin in and cast my foot. Then he'll remove the cast after 3 weeks, remove stitches, cast me again. Then after 6 weeks from date of surgery, he'll remove the cast again and remove the pin. Then I think I'll still be in another cast and a boot. I don't know when I'll be able to put some weight on the foot.