An early release for what I'm calling "good behaviour". Actually, it was the surgeon's office that had to reschedule my appointment but allowed me to go to the local hospital to have the dressings removed.A word of caution: potential gross-out warning in the tale ahead. Just saying!
Initially, I wondered if I could just cut the dressings off by myself, but decided that some professional assistance might be a good idea. I was able to see the Primary Health Nurse earlier this morning and she brought one of the doctors in to have a look and discuss how to proceed. I guess they don't get to look at post-surgical fused toe joints too often.
There were several thick layers of dressings, several strips of some kind of sticky mesh-type tape and a long piece of suture thread that emerged from the skin at each end of the incision. There were several flaps of dead skin; the suture thread had to be pulled out - all 3 or 4 inches of it.
And, for the first time in 58 days, I was able to put on a regular sock, slip my foot into one of my old sneakers and walk away.
I have to say that I've been surprisingly unwilling to walk normally. I guess that will take some time after limping for 8 weeks. My first job was to soak my foot in the tub and scrub off all that dead skin. It's quite amazing how much dead skin was all under all those bandages. Rub in some skin lotion. Expose the foot to the air.
I certainly have a sense of relief to finally have the bandages off. I can try on various pieces of footwear to see how they fit. I have to learn how to walk again which means consciously not limping. Time to try on my ski boot to see how that feels. The joint is definitely solid and right now it feels great for the first time in several years. Weird.
No comments:
Post a Comment