Jan 29 - Post Surgery

You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.


They say it and it’s true.

I went into surgery last Thursday expecting a minor bump in the road, and by the next week I’d be moving around like nothing happened.

Ya…not so much.

It’s Friday now and I’m able to put a sock on my right foot, put very little weight on it and hop up and down the stairs.

Earlier this week, I experienced life as I never want to again…without mobility.

I was not able to put pressure on my foot for 5 days and thus I was stricken to crutches for my regular movement.

It took me about 5 minutes to get up from the couch and hobble my way to the bathroom and back…or to move from the living room to the bedroom.

I could not climb stairs and I was not able to go outside for 4 days.

It’s pretty unreal how you have to adjust life when you have any kind of injury, your whole world changes.

After having surgery on this part of the anatomy, I would have to say there may be no more crippling injury than one done to the foot.

Try it, even for an hour or two…try not being able to walk on your right foot, hoping around and holding your foot off the ground or at a 90 degree angle at the knee.

I challenge you to be able to go about your regular routine with that deprivation.

I’m not looking for sympathy here, I’m just sharing my experience and offering my sincere worship for people that are stuck with these wooden assistants for a much longer time than I am – because I could not do it.

I got used to moving around slowly but surely and all the bandage changes and sporadic shooting pain became tolerable.

But, I’ve always been a person that does not like to ask for help, whether it’s the macho testosterone gene or a belief that other people couldn’t do it as well as me, it’s hard for me to put faith in other people’s assistance.

This past week though, I have depended on it.

Craig has given me rides into work every day this week, Kim has driven me to the mall, my Mom and Dad – God bless them – have done everything from making lunch for me to getting me glasses of water at my request to changing my bandages daily.

Some people would revel in this lifestyle – ask and you receive – but I not only felt guilty and embarrassed by having to ask for these things, I also felt useless and frustrated.

On Thursday morning when I was able to put a sock on my foot for the first time I was immediately thrilled to achieve such an accomplishment in my recovery – then became immediately frustrated, realizing I was celebrating PUTTING ON A SOCK!

I understand after any procedure, there is a period of recovery…and I’ll be the first to admit I am not as active as I should be…but I didn’t lose the ability to go for a morning jog – I lost the ability to walk from a bedroom into a living room without an aid.

And there may be no more abnormal feeling than when you put your foot on the ground for the first time in 4 or 5 days and have literally forgotten how to walk on it.

Not in the sense of one foot in front of the other, but in having enough faith and confidence that if you begin to step and land properly on that foot that it won’t buckle underneath you and send you falling without a net onto the ground.

So I need to thank all the men and women at Windsor Regional, Bayshore Home Health, my parents, Kim, Craig, Maureen, Dr. Adams and many others for there help…everything from surgery to bringing me another glass of milk or making sure I don’t do a faceplant while walking up the stairs.

It is an experience I will not forget, an experience that now doesn’t seem worth it, and one I would never want to go through again.