My saga began in June of 2011 while playing softball. Rounding third base I stepped in a hole and face planted. This was my 9th game in less than 24 hours and my body was giving out at this point. I ignored the pain for two more months so I could finish the season out. In August I finally went to the surgeon to see what was going on after a trip to the zoo where I was barely able to walk.
To sum it up, I went through about every conservative treatment including cortisone shots, a brace, more cortisone, anti-inflammatories, the boot, more cortisone, orthotics, and physical therapy. Nothing helped. The surgeon I was seeing was puzzled and referred me to his associate who was a rear foot specialist. He did some special test and determined where the issue was. He noticed after having me stand that I was severely pronated so he ordered some different x-ray views that verified that my arch was collapsing. The only correction at this point was surgery.
I was in the process of starting a new job at that time and had to wait for my new insurance policy to kick in. I had to wait 3 months for my surgery day to come. Man did it seem like it took forever. On April 20th I went in for a subtalar fusion, talonavicular fusion, and achilles tendon lengthening. Surgery went as planned. I was in for about 3 hours. I woke up in a fiberglass cast. I spent two nights in the hospital for pain management as I did not have a block. I had some issues while I was in the hospital with the cast being too tight. The day after surgery my surgeon came in and bi-valved it. Four days post op, my swelling was so bad that I had to go in and have a totally new cast put on. It was cutting my circulation off. Just shy of two weeks post-op I was taking a shower and after I got out I realized that I had a leak in my shower cover and the entire inside of my cast was soaked. I was just a few days short of being able to have my stitches removed so he put me in the boot for 3 days. That was horrible. It was so heavy and my foot wasn't sitting down in it right. So within two weeks I was on my third cast. Boy did I feel like an idiot!
A week after getting my stitches out I was crutching through my living room and caught one of my crutches on the carpet. I put all of my weight down pretty hard. I am not a little girl and wouldn't you know, I broke my cast! He was able to just repair it with some extra casting tape rather than put an entire new one on. The rest of recovery went smooth after that.
In July I got my cast off! It was completely fused! After two weeks in a boot, I transitioned to wearing tennis shoes. I was working in physical therapy for about three weeks when I had a mishap. In the beginning of August, I arrived to find that I was not working with any of the normal girls that work there. They had me working with a student who was in her clinicals by herself. She told me that she wanted to test my strength and for me to hold my foot up and prevent her from pushing it down. I had this test before by the actual physical therapist during an assessment but never by a PTA during an appointment so I was a bit puzzled why she was doing it. I just went with it. Well instead of applying a gentle steady pressure, she stood up and applied a hard jolting motion. I came up off the table cursing and crying and threatened her that I would kick her in the face if she did that again. I continued on that session. The next day I returned for my session. I was pretty sore. Upon arriving I mentioned to my normal girl what had happened. She said there was nothing in my file mentioning what happened. I then also talked to the owner/my PT.
I already had an appointment scheduled with my surgeon as a follow up a few days later. I explained to him what had happened and that I was experiencing some new popping sensations that were pretty bad. He immediately put me back to NWB and ordered a CT Scan. The CT Scan verified my biggest fear. My subtalar fusion had been broken. 85% of the joint was no longer fused. I remained NWB and began taking excessive amounts of calcium in addition to using a bone growth stimulator. I did this from August until the end of November. It still would not fuse so we scheduled revision surgery and this is where I stand today......UGH! Surgery is in 11 days and I am just ready to get it over with.
I look forward to using this forum to be able to FREELY support eachother without the bullcrap moderating every comment. I am going to work on getting some more people to join but thank you for visiting!!
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