Improving every day

I'm in that golden period now where the swelling as stopped, the sharp twinges have petered out and life is returning to normal. I still get a searing hot pain in the side of my foot around 9 or 10 at night and I end up balancing on the other leg to relieve it. It usually happens when I'm cleaning my teeth! It is totally unrelated to how much I've pushed my foot that day. All day on my feet or feet up most of the day - no difference.

Returning to running is going really well. Yesterday I went than Achilles New Zealand training session and had an excellent fartlek session. I had gone in planning on walking and ended up running. It was the start of my journey to the New York Marathon 2015. I'm really going to try out the handling of my new foot.

I'm still trying remember to massage the scars as much as possible but they don't seem to cause any problems in shoes, which is what I was concerned about. 

They're still pink but are quite unobtrusive and definitely not worthy of gross out status. No one runs screaming when I reveal my naked foot.

Time seems to have both flown and dragged. I'm surprised at the speed of recovery but I'm also surprised that the six month mark is still so far out. It seems so long ago I was hobbling around in my shiny pink cast.

Four months post op

Well, it has been a while! Up until recently I wasn't sure how it was all going but now things seem to be going really well.

I've been having physio with all sorts of interesting exercises - picking up marbles with my toes, pressing a ball against the wall with the side of my foot, balancing on one leg on a towel - tricky!, bent knee calf raises and subtle movements with a stretchy band. At first my foot was not happy but it is starting to relent. I no longer need the bed cradle to keep the sheets off my foot. I wear an ankle support when I need to be on my feet for a while or put them under pressure. Finally the swelling has subsided and the cankles are gone - most of the time. I was on my feet for over five hours cheering on all the entrants in the Auckland Marathon on Sunday and it was a bit puffy at the end of the day.

But my piece de resistance is I am starting run again pain-free. It's really baby steps. I'm doing something very like the couch potato to 5k program. I'm running all of three minutes in one go but repeated and it is actually more comfortable than walking. The reason I am doing this is I may have the opportunity to run the New York marathon next year and I want to be ready. I definitely wouldn't be running it in its entirety but I'd like to be able to run walk and feel fit enough to finish.

My bicycling has had the benefit of not only building my scrawny calf back up again and helping the ankle to be more mobile but also building up my leg strength. I'm really glad that I had it there to help me. It was certainly a sanity saver when i could barely hobble around post cast removal. 

The scar under my heel where the screws went in is barely noticeable. The one up my leg is quite smooth and causes no problems. The one along the side of my foot still causes me some annoyance. It's rough and tight and can feel like it's on fire at the end of the day. I'm rubbing it with balm in the evenings to try and help break up the scar tissue and give some relief. It is soooo painful to rub. When the physio does it I am nearly in tears. Fortunately it doesn't seem to rub in shoes or anything so it is really mainly about aesthetics - it is ugly. I look like someone hacked at me with a blunt knife. 

So am I pleased I had the surgery? I think so. Occasionally my arch complains about being in its new position but nothing major. My foot looks better and I've got used to seeing it as a new streamlined version. The screws have caused no problems after the initial discomfort. I don't have the ongoing pain from the torn ligament and I can feel that once my heel settles down I'm likely to be pain free. Hopefully the realignment of my heel will stop me from being a so much risk for the inversion injuries. So yes, I am pleased!