Getting stronger, moving forward.

Well friends... another long time between posts. Summer seemed to have whizzed by at lightning speeds. I've had a million things to say which got buried in the passage of time but here we are, the crisp crackle of fall creeping in. It is time to wrap up my story about my foot surgery so I can move on to other topics.

It has now been 4 months and 11 days since my left bunionectomy. The first couple months were really tough. I got the annoying medical boot off after 7 weeks and still had a solid limp at that point. Being that I could barely bend my toe to get any sort of shoe on, my surgeon recommended physical therapy, which was incredibly helpful. Oh yeah - and the wound wasn't healing. That was sort of fascinating because I know research-a-plenty shows that stress can inhibit wound healing (e.g. J.K. Kiecolt-Glaser et al., 1995). I wondered if the stress of my career contributed to the delay. I did find an interesting herbal remedy called Manuka honey that supposedly speeded healing if you put it directly on the cut, but I ended up having an allergic reaction to the stuff which just made things worse (note to self - always do a test patch on healthy skin first). Finally, by 3 months along I was doing well enough to still go on a planned hiking/backpacking trip to Crater Lake national park in Oregon. *phew*! Though a bit swollen and sore, my foot survived 3 days and about 15 miles of backwoods hiking. 

4 mo post-op left foot comparison

I wanted to think this meant I was fully healed but sadly that's not quite true yet. When we got back home to Mass. I slowly tried to start getting back to doing things like running but my progress is very slow. When I walk I often still get a strong crunch feeling in my toe and foot as though a knuckle is cracking which tends to startle me, though I admit its not terribly painful when it happens, save the 1 second scare. Nonetheless, I reached 1 full mile of running two days ago, which felt like a big milestone.


All in all I guess I'm doing pretty well. In this photo I just took my lefty is still a bit swollen (apparently it can take a year to get better) but you can see the huge difference between the left and right foot, and between the pic in my last post. Straight toe! There's also still a little scar from where the cast made a huge sore on top of my foot but hoping that gets better in time too. I've decided to spare you the gory "in between" photos of everything healing along the way. 
 
So... I've got a little less than three months until I go in for the right foot. In the mean time I'm hoping to get as much exercise as possible - my wedding countdown clock tells me there are fewer than 248 days left until that big event and I want to be ready for some dancin'! :)
   
I'll also try to enjoy the last bits of sunlight as summer fade away into the glorious coziness of fall. On the right is a picture of my backyard at sunset this evening. The iphone couldn't handle low lighting very well but in addition to the amazing sky the leaves are showing some beautiful hues too.