One of the annoying things that happens post-op with this kind of surgery is losing, within a day or two, all the lovely muscle tone you've painstakingly built up during the weeks and months before. Once everything starts knitting back together, though, I imagine you'll get physio, and exercises to do on your own? Looking forward to hearing how that goes. Meanwhile, a laptop and a fast connection are a huge help in overcoming the frustration of immobility.
I know I will lose most of the muscle tone in the six weeks it's immobilized, but I will have physical therapy and I'll work to get it back again. It will probably take eight months for it to get back to normal, however.
Thanks for the good wishes, everyone.
I'm using the ice machine and taking the pain medicine pretty regularly, so the pain so far has not been as bad as I feared it would be.
I got Ancef in my IV and I haven't had a fever so I think it's not getting infected
If I sit at my computer desk for very long at all, my ankle starts to swell and hurt even though I elevate it parallel to the floor on my knee walker.
I'm using a huge bean bag to elevate my foot above my head on the couch where I have been sleeping since the surgery. My husband is driving our daughter to school this week, then she will have Christmas vacation for two weeks. A special education teacher rode with her to school on Friday so my husband could stay with me for the surgery. This teacher had foot surgery before and she was non-weight bearing for eighteen months, so she brought me her ice machine and her knee walker so I would have back ups on different floors of my house. It was a really good thing she did because the ice machine I got from the surgery center quit working Saturday after less than 24 hours. If I couldn't have used hers, it would have been difficult to use enough ice to feel the cold through all these thick bandages.