Boot the Boot

Yesterday was my first day that I was allowed to be out of the boot all day!

I've been working on weaning out of the boot for the last week and a half or so.

I still don't walk "normally", or what I would consider normal anyway.  I think that will just take time.  I move pretty slow when walking, and I have a little bit of a limp.  As the day goes on my limp starts to get a little worse.  I can't say that walking is necessarily painful, but my foot feels stiff and a unnatural. I still have plenty of hardware inside my foot that I am sure is not helping.  I don't know how long it will take until things start to feel normal again, but I can say that I'm just happy to be walking.  My arch still isn't ready to support my barefoot, so I need to have shoes on, preferably with an insert, to do any walking around.  I have been trying to stand up more in the shower, rather than using my gimp stool, but my right foot still feels slippery on the tile.  Like my foot can't grip onto the smooth surface or something, so I still need to steady myself on the wall.

I did have a follow-up appointment this week at TOSH.  They took a set of x-rays, and this is the very first time I've taken a weight bearing x-ray on my right foot!  I was a bit sore afterwards, since I had to be barefoot and my foot is still not ready for that.  The doctor indicated that everything looked great, and had me schedule surgery on December 15th to remove the two screws.  I was very specific that the surgery not conflict with the new Star Wars movie release, since I already have purchased our midnight tickets on opening night!  He confirmed that my plate will stay in, mostly because the navicular bone does not get a lot of blood supply and taking it out may cause it to just crumble.  Ain't nobody got time for that.  Also, all of the screws will stay in the plate as well.  I guess I'd always just assumed that they would come out.  I can feel them, and it bugs me, but I'm sure after a while my foot will just get used to it's permanent guests.  There is also a screw head that is across my Lisfranc joint (at the base of my 1st and 2nd metatarsals) that is poking my inside arch.  It's been increasingly painful as I start to increase walking without the boot.  It has been really tender the last few days.  When I mentioned this to the doctor, he pressed down on the area to confirm it was the screw and not anything else.  My yelp confirmed that yep, it's the screw.  Ow.  It was so sore that day after he did that.  Jerk!  Lol.  I'm glad that screw will be removed in a couple of weeks.

Thankfully, I've got a lot of vacation time banked at work, and I will use most of it for my surgery and my holiday vacation.  My co-workers unfortunately won't be seeing me much in the month of December!

For Black Friday, Nate and I splurged a bit and purchased a spin bike for our basement gym.  Since I can't run, I actually couldn't even really walk for exercise right now, I wanted something at home that I could do for sustainable cardio.  I really have been limited to lifting weights with my Power Blocks, or my TRX.  While I love both of those,  I need to do cardio (says the extra 20lbs I've put on since surgery!) and that is not really an option with strength training.

Even when I can start walking enough to increase my heart rate enough to the point of cardio, let me remind you that it is winter in Utah.  Not only is the air freezing cold, and the ground icy, but we have this lovely thing called inversion, when the cold air gets trapped in the mountain valley, along with all the smog and pollution.  It's quite disgusting, and breathing the air outside is not pleasurable.  Most of January and February, when the inversion is at its worst, I struggle to breathe and often have horrible sinus issues. Exercising outside just makes it that much worse.  Here's an example of the lovely crap the Salt Lake Valley gets to deal with for the majority of the winter:

  
I also had a birthday this week!  I'm now at the ripe old age of 32.  Nate got me a gorgeous necklace
that holds my wedding ring, and took me on a hot date to Ruth's Chris where I had the most phenomenal surf & turf.

The last time I got fancied up was for our anniversary in August.  I was still on my scooter, non-weight bearing and I had to keep my foot elevated most of the time.  It was great to be able to go out without having "special needs" and I could be a normal girl for a night out on the town!  It also made me reflect on how tough this year has been on me (and Nate) and I am so grateful that I had my best friend by my side the entire time and I realize that I could not have made it through this without him.