Fabulous Foot Friday ....

We are safely home from Chicago and had an awesome day on Friday!

Our day started with a phone call at 7am from the assistant of the pain physician, telling us that they had massive storms with flooding, closed streets, and power outages the evening before. Many schools were cancelled on Friday, over 2,000 people were without power and many businesses were closed. The pain physician had severe flooding in his neighborhood, so he was not able to make it into the office on Friday. I'll have to talk to him via e-mail, which will be okay. Thankfully, my orthopedic surgeon lived in another area of Glenview and there was not as much storm damage – whew!

She was delighted to see us and spent close to half an hour with us. She took x-rays, examined the foot carefully, watched me walk with sandals, in tennis shoes, and barefoot. She had me stand on my tip toes, stand on one foot and 10-12 other positions. She watched me walk up and down the hallway several times. She couldn’t have been happier and we all knew that we’ve waited for the happy moment of success for a long time. She said, “If you had not told me about the improvement via e-mail, I would be on the floor right now.” She kept asking me to do various things with the foot and then said, “I want you to know that I’m enjoying this!” She was astonished at the minimal amount of medicine I am taking for pain …. she even looked at my mom when I answered her question about the pain situation and asked if my answer was correct – it was. There was no attempt by anyone to explain the situation, other than a miracle from God.

We both agreed that there needs to be some additional physical therapy happen, so we’re going to do that three times/week (same therapist in St. Louis) for the next four weeks. She gave me some additional exercises to use at home and we’re going to continue to work hard on the “toe off” motion, which should eventually allow me to have more of a choice with regular shoes. We took her a framed picture (for her office) of my feet with the palm tree sandals and she loved it!

I start physical therapy (Mon/Wed/Fri) tomorrow. There is a bony spot just above the big toe that is sharp and is continually rubbing on any shoe. It has just started am I’m hoping it will either go away or get better naturally. It feels like the sharp piece needs to be filed down from the inside, although I don’t want to do this. My intention is to see how long I can live with it. There is also an itchy section on one incision that apparently is nerve/scar tissue that is healing …..apparently this can continue to quite some time, but it is annoying at the moment. The skin has broken open, because I’ve itched so hard. I’ll deal w/it – not nearly as annoying as an “itch” under a hard cast.

We had a wonderful day on Friday and had a fantastic lunch at a place called “Montana Grill” in Glenview, IL – yeast rolls were splendid! It was fun to spend time with family, have dinner out on Saturday night and delight in the first “Eickhorst” baby that was born last week into our family.

Thanks for all your prayers on Friday …. We were blessed to not have arrived during the storm on Thursday and that my orthopedic surgeon was able to make it to work on Friday. Will keep you posted on how physical therapy goes this week – pray for no “incision itching." We are taking measurements of the foot motion tomorrow at our initial physical therapy session. I am anxious to see if there is more movement there now compared to when I stopped therapy in July ... my guess is that it has increased significantly. (The bottom picture above it Jenny w/the Chicago orthopod.)

Hope you have a joyous week!
je