January 20, 2012 4th Post Op for Foot

On Friday January 20th, I went to check if the pin was ready to come out and to get the fourth bandage change.  Guess what...the pin was finally ready!  Woot, woot!!  When he wiggled it, it did not hurt at all.  When he pulled it out, it didn't hurt, but I felt a lot of pressure.  It only bled a little.  Then he took x-rays to make sure it was healing up properly before he could tell me if I could start bearing weight on it again.  The x-rays came out so well, he said I could bear all my weight on it if I could stand it.  After finally seeing the post op x-ray, I finally saw exactly what he did to my foot...ouch...it was a lot more than I thought.  Not only did he cut the bone on the side of the foot that was sticking out, but he actually cut my entire big toe bone off and moved it to be straight and the pin was placed in to hold it straight until the bone healed in place properly.  As the bone healed, it pushed the pin out of the bone and when it was completely pushed out of the bone, it was ready to be pulled out.  So 3 weeks and 2 days it took for my bone to heal.  The pin was about 2 inches long inside the foot.  Jason forgot to take a picture of that.  They asked me if I wanted to take it home and I said, "no thanks!"  I started walking with my crutches and bearing weight on my foot, but my muscles were seizing up on me...they hadn't been used in over 3 weeks and they did not like being used again.  I'm sure this will get better with time.  My goal is to be off the crutches and just use the walking shoe starting Monday.  We'll see if that happens or not.  That night after the pin came out they told me it would start to hurt because the pin came out and they bandaged it to pull my big toe to the right to be straight.  Well, they weren't lying.  Around 4:30 pm the pain started becoming intense, so I took one pain pill.  Around 5:40 pm the pain was getting more intense so I took another.  The pain pills were not touching the pain, so every 5 hours until 4:00 am, I would take two pain pills.  It is now 3:00 pm the next day and I have not had any pain medicine since 4:00 am.  I think the pain is settled down and they told me I would feel relief today, and so I am.  I went to Michael's to get some supplies for Kaylyn's science project board and did okay walking around with my crutches.  I tried to be bold a few times and not use my crutches, but I would almost collapse, so I'll wait a little longer for this ;-)