Foot surgery

Yes, I am having foot surgery in a couple of weeks. March 1st to be exact.
I'm nervous about the recovery and how I will manage my life while not being able to walk normally. When I met with the surgeon he spent a lot of time discussing the possible scarring I will have and I just kept thinking "who cares about that?!" It's my foot, not my face.  What I want to know is, will my foot stop hurting? Will I be able to walk and run? How long til I can walk normally again?

So, this all started years ago.  I remember going to a podiatrist with foot pain back in Massachusetts (so at least 5 years ago) and he told me I had sesamoiditis. Like tendonitis by my sesamoid bones (bottom of the foot, if you don't know). He gave me some shoe inserts and offered me a steroid injection which I declined.

Over the years this sesamoiditis has flared up occasionally. Whenever I get serious about working out, it comes right back and I end up on the couch where I really want to be anyway. I figured I knew what it was so I never went to the doctor.

But the pain finally got to be too much for me so I went to an orthopedic foot specialist. He x-rayed my foot and found that I have not only sesamoiditis but also two fractures. One in the sesamoid bone and one in the bone that goes to the big toe. Hmmm no wonder my foot hurts!

We did some things to keep the foot stable in the hopes of having some healing and he sent to me physical therapy. The pain never got any better.  So we followed up with an MRI.

Turns out that somewhere along the way, the blood supply to that little sesamoid bone was disrupted and now that bone has died.  Did you know a bone could just die? The tendons are inflamed and one is slightly torn.

So the treatment for this situation (called osteonecrosis) is to remove the bone. Apparently this little bone can be removed and there is not much of a problem. I don't totally believe this but that's what they say.  If the other sesamoid bone dies (there are two) then I will have a bit more of a problem since they act as levers for the big toe.  So, once I recover from surgery I have to wear inserts to take some of the pressure off of those bones for the foreseeable future. I have high arches and very tight calves which contribute to me putting more than the normal amount of pressure on my sesamoid bones.  Who knew?

Because of my painful foot, I have been altering my gait without realizing it and I have developed pain in that knee as well as pain and tendonitis in that hip.  I am a mess, I tell you!  The physical therapist says that being in a boot will likely exacerbate those conditions.  So by the time my foot is improving, I will likely have some work to do to get my knee and hip feeling better too.

I'm just dreading the whole thing!  But my foot hurts enough that I'm willing to go through it.

It makes me feel old.  And it makes me wonder if I should just accept being a pudgy middle aged woman rather than imagining myself becoming an athlete again.  I swear it wasn't that long ago that I could do stuff...bike, swim, run, lift weights etc.  That's not how it is right now and it sucks.

But also, I love being a couch potato.  It's a conundrum.