Life on Mars?

A short and sweet post, the first two weeks of November was all about a mad dash round property prior to surgery cutting, pruning, mowing, spraying, cleaning, you get the idea, before the impending surgery on my foot. The last two weeks I’ve being recovering from said surgery, plotting and planning for the upcoming year and not much else!

I got a couple of last few fun rides although they are becoming less fun with the pain levels getting higher and higher.

My Surgery date loomed and whilst I was not too worried, I was nervous, it was my first elective surgery and my first surgery on my legs or feet and anything load-bearing. I had not used crutches before. I was lucky to have health insurance so I had a palatial room to myself and I settled in to wait with lots of friendly visits by nurses and staff to see how I am, explain things. The surgeon popped in and autographed the appropriate leg, I signed my life away a few times, had a fun chat with the anaesthetist, then I was rolling into the prep room, I remember the first injection and then the next things I was aware of I was back in my room. Candy said that the surgeon had rung her whilst I was in the recovery room but not awake (if I was awake there, I was not aware,) but anyway he said that the nerves were very inflamed and that they definitely needed to come out, which was super news after everything being a bit non-committal prior to being opened up. I had two toes done, it’s more common for a single toe, but “luckily” they were side by side, which meant one incision, that said, it wasn’t keyhole surgery. Because I needed adjoining nerves to be excised, it means that my 3rd toe will be numb for a decade or so while the nerves grow back.

After that basically it was a day and a half of painkillers, reading my books, dozing no real sleeping and being fed a huge amount of food, not just because my friend is the head of kitchen operations (thanks Colin!) with extras being offered left, right and centre. Yes I know, I end up paying for it all, but I certainly believe that this kind of environment does help with the recovery. I didn’t react well to the opiates, or rather I just got trippy and it did nothing for the pain, so it took a while to get a medication regime to work. It also turned out that I seemed to have a wee reaction to the glue in the dressing tape they were using, although it took about 10 days to really figure it out. The crutches weren’t too bad actually and thankfully I never needed a bed pan or to be washed. Yay! The car trip home wasn’t pleasant and I really didn’t like sleeping downstairs, but apart from the pain (from the tape) it was all pretty manageable and I was upstairs in the big bed pretty quickly.

Now it was a week and a half of painkillers, reading books, watching the big box, listening to audiobooks, elevating my foot and generally messing around doing very little and then off to the surgeon for a check in and hopefully get the stitches out. I drove in myself which was a bit of a discomfort, but apart from a bit of claret flowing the removal of the stitches made everything feel so much better. The surgeon told me that the nerves were about twice the size they should have been, he was happy with the recovery and we made plans to do the other foot in December 2019.

So now I am can hobble about pretty good, I shall start walking the hounds a bit each day and then progress to some outside work and then back onto the bike!

Thanks for Candy for being Nurse, Cook, Fetcher and Cleaner for me all whilst still handling her full-time job – kisses.

Scary Photos >> https://photos.app.goo.gl/n5vNks8HLdzLsoBv5

Life on Mars?