My Healing Journey - Part 2: Now What?
This is a follow-up to my previous post, which you can find here.
It’s not easy going from 10,000+ steps per day and 4-5 strength workouts per week to being relegated to a couch or bed for weeks on end. After the initial ankle injury, my next step was to set up an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon. That seems like an easy enough task, right? Well, when your husband has JUST started a new job, and your insurance has only been in effect for a week, meaning you don’t have insurance cards or even a log-in or member ID number yet, it gets complicated quickly. By the time I had all of the insurance confusion cleared up, my surgery was scheduled for 12 days post-injury.
Do you have any idea what it’s like going from being super active every day and taking care of everyone around you to laying around in excruciating pain for TWELVE days while having to rely on others for everything and knowing you aren’t even beginning to heal yet? Ugh! 0/5 Stars. I don’t recommend it. Thank GOD for my family trying to cheer me up and keep me focused on positivity, because my head was on its way to a very dark place very quickly. I passed the time by reading Anne Rice novels and watching every single episode of House Hunters International that I could find, while my mom and David kept me fed and took care of the house and kids. I had to have help showering, getting dressed, and even going to the bathroom in those early days of recovery. I loathed feeling like a burden to everyone around me, even though I knew in my heart that they didn’t see it that way. Those intrusive thoughts just kept coming up over and over. Clearly, I’m better at being a caregiver than a patient.
Finally, I was able to meet with my doctor and schedule surgery day, which arrived on January 21st. David and I had to be at the outpatient surgery center located 45 minutes away by 6am, and we managed to make it, even though our anxieties had kept us up most of the night. I honestly think he was more worried than I was. I’ve had a few surgeries in my day, and I tend to do fairly well with anesthesia, but I still can’t help but feel a bit apprehensive each time. I was a little irritated that I wasn’t allowed to eat or drink anything after midnight the night before, but I tried to stay positive and focus on being able to actually begin getting better. After completing a few registration requirements and almost falling over in the bathroom while trying to pee in a cup (Thanks to my fearless husband for catching me and managing to not spill a drop of urine. He’s the real MVP! 😂), I was called back, and the process began.
Due to to the severity of my ankle breaks, I would require ORIF or Open Reduction Internal Fixation, meaning a titanium plate and several screws would be needed to reconnect my bones, and when they drill into a bone, that shit can cause pain of a level most people can’t even imagine. (A fact I discovered firsthand in 2010 when I refused a nerve block before going under for repair of my broken wrist after a car accident and. instantly regretted that decision once the morphine wore off. Holy hell!) Because of this, I was given a nerve block in my upper left leg which would deaden the nerves in that leg for 24-48, or so they told me. I was also given a scopolamine patch behind my ear to help with nausea from the anesthesia and was told to keep it on for 3 days. I heard “scopolamine” and instantly thought of people tripping balls in the desert, but I’m assuming this was a much smaller dose than experienced hippies enjoy. Good to know it has some medical use, although I’d later realize that it’s not for me.
Ready for surgery. How lucky am I that my hairnet coordinates with my gown? 😂
Everyone I met at the surgery center was incredibly kind and jovial, joking around with me, offering genuine smiles, and exuding an air of compassion. It helped quite a lot to ease my anxiety. They removed my temporary splint from the ER, and we discovered a nasty, slightly-infected pressure sore on the top of my foot from it swelling against its wrappings. This must’ve been contributing to the pain and heat I’d been experiencing in my foot. I was given an IV in the crook of my arm after 4 unsuccessful attempts at putting it in my forearm. Those bruises weren’t fun later. My doctor stopped by before they moved me to the operating room to check in and have me write on my leg with permanent marker, so they didn’t accidentally operate of the one that was swollen and purple, i guess. Just a few minutes later, I was wheeled into the operating room where I was surrounded by people as a mask was placed over my mouth and nose, and someone told me goodnight.
When I awoke, I was incredibly groggy and sluggish, but for the first time in almost two weeks, I wasn’t in pain, so that was great. Thank you, nerve block!I was told everything went well. David would later inform me that my surgeon had come out after to update him and said “It was pretty messy in there, but we cleaned it up and got everything put back together.” Apparently, my tissues looked like minced meat in the front side of my ankle. Ew. It took a while to become coherent enough to be discharged, but once I could move around, I immediately noticed how much lighter and smaller my new post-surgery soft cast was. Yay! The one I had been in for the last twelve days was quite bulky and felt like it weighed 20 pounds, so I was relieved to have a little more freedom of movement, especially considering that my left leg had to be carried around like a useless sack of garbage for weeks on end. I definitely didn’t feel awesome after surgery. The drive home was a very unenjoyable game of Will She or Won’t She Vomit while my head ached with every slight bump our car hit, and considering the state of roads in Tennessee, there were plenty.
We made it home safely, and David helped get me up our porch steps, through the house, and into bed while I was basically a limp, nauseous noodle. I must’ve slept on and off for most of the afternoon. My mom tried to get me to eat some minestrone in bed, but my stomach was not thrilled at the idea. You know I wasn’t feeling great when I couldn’t even down my favorite soup. I don’t even want to imagine how bad it would’ve been without that scopolamine patch. It was after dark before I finally felt ok enough to sit up and even watch some TV with the family, and I even managed to eat half of my soup. I don’t remember much from that first night, but I know I slept better than I had in almost two weeks thanks to the nerve block, but alas, that wouldn’t last. Sleeping on your back with several pillows under your leg doesn’t exactly make for a great night’s rest. It would be several weeks before I’d have another decent sleep.
It was the morning after surgery when I noticed I couldn’t read any standard sized text on my phone. Everything within arms-length of my face was blurry. I thought, “Huh. That’s odd,” but thankfully, I’d recently purchased some 1.50 readers, so I just threw those on and went about my day. “Went about my day” basically just means, I moved from the bed to the couch and kept my left leg propped up on 4 pillows while reading my Kindle (with glasses on), watching TV, or talking to my mom, who, by the way, was making sure Bodhi made it to and from school during this whole ordeal. The pain I’d been experiencing since the accident made it practically impossible to be upright for more than a few minutes at a time. Keeping my leg elevated was the only thing that helped, so driving wasn’t feasible, and the thought of going up and down the narrow porch steps then across the uneven ground of our gravel driveway to get to the car was absolutely terrifying. If I stumbled or tripped while on crutches, I could’ve done some serious damage, and so Mom was handling all of the travel, as well as errands in those early weeks, staying with us Monday through Friday and going home on the weekends. As for the blurred vision, I just wrote it off as a weird side effect of the anesthesia, but I did mention it to Mom and David. We decided to just monitor the situation and call the doctor if it got worse or didn’t improve after a few days.
When the vision problems continued the following day, I was slightly more worried. At some point that morning, I went to scratch an itch behind my ear and realized the scopolamine patch was still there. It occurred to me that maybe I should look up if there are any side effects to this medication. Guess what the number one item listed was… yep, blurred vision. Mystery solved! I decided to remove the patch a day early, even though I definitely was still experiencing nausea and a lack of appetite, but I figured my eyes not being able to focus wasn’t helping. It took a couple of days for my vision to return to normal, which was annoying, but I learned something: My body REALLY doesn’t like drugs. 😂 If you read my previous post about the bizarre ketamine trip I had in the ER, you’ll know exactly what I mean. For this reason, I also was taking the prescription pain meds they gave me after surgery very sparingly. Fortunately, my 24-48 hour nerve block didn’t fully wear off for almost a week, by which time I was able to get by with over-the-counter pain meds. Coming off the prescribed medication wasn’t a fun few days, but I got through it. I can see now why it’s so hard for people to get off of them after long term use. I also continued to deal with nausea and loss of appetite for about two weeks after surgery. I know I lost some weight that I didn’t need to part with throughout this process, but now, 3.5 months later, I’m happy to say I’ve put it back on.
Five days post-surgery, I finally felt well enough to leave the house. David drove us to my mom’s house that Saturday, and we decided to venture out for lunch and visit the local Walmart. Exciting, I know. This was my first time ever using one of those electric scooters they have by the entryway, and my husband laughed so hard watching me cruise around the store with my foot propped up on the basket, almost knocking over displays because it took me a little while to master the steering and breaking. It was nice to giggle again. It felt so good to be out doing anything other that laying around, but I couldn’t hang for long. My foot swelled and started to ache again fairly quickly, and I became incredibly tired. I ended up napping in my late stepfather’s recliner when we returned to Mom’s house. I realized I needed to take things a bit slower after that and didn’t make another trip out in public for another week or two.
My first time out and likely my first time smiling so wide since January 9th. Shout out to my mom for using an old scarf to make me a warm sock large enough to fit over my soft cast/splint.
It was insanely difficult to be so immobile for so long, but it did show me how much my family loves me. And it certainly showed them how much I do around here. LOL! I think everyone was happy when I could finally make meals and clean floors again, which didn’t happen until about 3 weeks post-op. The purchase of a knee roller was a gamechanger. I had used a rollator walker or crutches to get around before that, and neither were ideal for the activities I wanted to accomplish. Crutches left me with no way to carry things, and the walker wouldn’t allow me to get close enough to the counter to make food without getting a massive back ache. The knee roller had a cargo bag on the front, and it would roll right up to the kitchen counter. I started to really enjoy seeing how quickly I could get around and take corners with it, although looking back that probably wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done. But, then again, boredom will have you doing some weird shit. Seriously though, if you’re ever in a position of losing use of a leg temporarily, get yourself a knee roller.
I got my soft cast/splint off and stitches removed two weeks post-surgery, and while it felt amazing to be able to scratch my foot, I can’t even describe the horror of seeing what my leg, ankle, and foot looked like after all of that trauma. It honestly looked like it belonged to a cadaver. It took several days to even feel like that was MY leg, since it looked completely foreign to me. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so disconnected from a part of me. There were parts of my leg and foot where nerves were still not firing, meaning I had no feeling there, which didn’t help with that disconnection. Fortunately, that would prove to be a temporary problem. Have you ever heard of Foreign Limb Syndrome? I imagine that’s somewhat like what I was experiencing in those early days of my leg “waking back up.”
My fancy new hardware: A titanium plate and eight screws on the lateral side, and 2 very long screws on the medial side. And yes, I can sort of feel it when I rub across my scars.
I was given a surgical boot instead of a hard cast after my stitches were removed, and that was such a relief, since I’d mentally prepared myself to be in a cast for a another few weeks. I could finally shower without a garbage bag over my leg, and I could remove the boot to start working on flexing and pointing my foot, which would help get the muscles and nerves to fire again. I can’t begin to describe to you how wonderful it felt to move again, even if my range of motion was only about 5 degrees. This ordeal wasn’t over, but I finally could see progress and allow myself to be enthusiastic about the future. I finally knew for a fact that I was healing.
The moment that I knew I was finally on my way back to normal, even though it would be a long road ahead.
Thanks for reading this far. I’m finding it to be very therapeutic writing all of this out; processing the trauma the negative emotions I felt. Stay tuned for part 3.
