Friday, August 19, 2022

Drama a-foot! The left foot that is.

Nearly four weeks ago I fell into a hole and injured my left foot. (five now as it took a while to finish this post)

We were walking in a park near our house one Sunday morning before church. Ironically I was trying to avoid turning my ankle in the many cracks in the ground from all the hot dry weather this summer. John commented on a tree that was growing sideways up ahead. Neither one of us saw the hole. It was so covered over with grass it was not obvious--until I stepped in it! My left foot kept going, groping for solid ground. I lost my balance and sat down with an undignified screech. 

John helped me up and out of the hole where my foot and backside were wedged and to a nearby picnic table. While I checked my foot John investigated the hole. When he reached into it he discovered a cover that should have been over it but was broken and had fallen inside. The hole was a small man-made pit, maybe for irrigation connections. The cover must have been off it for some time for the grass to have grown through and around the hole to obscure it so thoroughly. 

Here it is with the lid John found.
It's more obvious after our adventures with it. 

The sideways tree and me rubbing my foot in the background. The hole in the foreground this time with the lid sticking up to hopefully warn others and help the repairmen find it. (John reported it to the city and they said they fixed it.)

Anyway after checking my foot over and wiggling my toes I thought I could walk home. It started hurting more as I walked but I made it home. Over the next few days I did my best to stay off it and ice and elevate it and all that stuff on-line articles say to do for sprains. 

It seemed to be getting better so I started doing more but it got worse again. So I was careful again for a few more days and then started doing more again. Then it got worse again. I would have seen a doctor sooner but our regular doctor's office was closed for a couple of weeks and one article I read on "Dr. Google" said that a stage-one sprain could take two weeks to heal so I thought I could wait until our doctor's office was open again. ("stage-one" is no swelling or visible bruising.) The symptoms didn't quite fit the description of a "stage one" sprain, though, so that should have given me a clue. There was swelling and bruising but only on the upper left side of my foot, not on the ankle.

Here it is after several days. The swelling had gone down and the bruising was starting to heal. 


Anyway after two and a half weeks I finally saw a doctor. Actually he's a nurse practitioner (NP), but I didn't know that until after I got there and was in the exam room waiting for him. Anyway he was available and my husband has seen him before and thinks well of him. He said there is tissue damage along the three left metatarsals. He ordered x-rays to check for fractures. 

The x-rays showed a "possible nondisplaced fracture along the lateral base of the second metatarsal that is best seen on the oblique radiograph." I'm not an expert but from what the NP said and what Google says: the metatarsals are the long bones on the top of the foot that connect the toe bones to the ankle bones. There are five, one for each toe. The second one corresponds to the toe next to the big toe. A nondisplaced fracture means the two parts of the bone are still in the proper alignment so surgery should not be necessary. The "base" is near the ankle end of the metatarsal. I don't know what "lateral base" means. The NP thought the radiologist said "a possible fracture" because it mainly shows on one of the x-ray views. He said usually a fracture will show on more than one view. 

I got ahold of the x-ray to see for myself what it looks like. I have no training in this so I can't tell what it's supposed to look like or what the radiologist was noticing. There is one place that I wonder if it is the fracture he is referring to (I put a circle around it). If it is a fracture it looks like it was starting to heal. Which it should have since it had been two and a half weeks at that point.

At any rate the NP said to stay off of the foot completely for 2-3 days even if there wasn't a fracture to help the ligaments and tendons heal. He said that if he had seen me right after the injury he would have said to stay completely off it for 5 days but since it had presumably healed a little already he thought that 2-3 days was enough. After that he said I could start putting weight on it "as tolerated." 

When I asked for more clarification He said it might be difficult for an active person but that I need to go easy on it and not do too much. 

I was surprised when he referred to me as an active person and almost said I wasn't. But then I thought, well I did get this injury while out for a walk and I keep reinjuring it because I want to be up doing housework and stuff. From his perspective maybe I am an active person. I tend to think of myself as bordering on lazy. But maybe that's another example of perfectionism (something I am trying to get free from.) 

A friend let us borrow their wheelchair which is a huge help. (I wasn't able to manage with crutches.)

I stayed off it completely for the first few days like he said. Since then I've started putting it on the floor sometimes but it doesn't seem to like it so I'm not doing it much. 


This picture shows how we set up my room to help me cope and not put weight on my foot.  The black question mark shaped bed rail on the side of the mattress was something we got for my Mom when she was living with us several years ago. Its a big help with transferring to and from the bed. We were storing it in the attic all these years--(that and the bedside commode which is also from when my Mom lived here. Our bathroom doors are too narrow for the wheelchair.)  I'm very thankful I did not declutter them! The black boot was from a couple of years ago when my Mom broke her ankle. I've tried several other braces and shoe type things but they don't give enough support.

Last week I asked our Pastor and his assistant from our church to visit and pray for me. I do believe it helped. But it's not all the way healed yet.

John wants me to call the NP and get a referral for an orthopedic doctor. I want to be willing to see another doctor, but I hesitate partly because from what others have said these things take time and partly because I really dislike going to doctors! (It is feeling better this week--I'm writing this over several days. The NP said that since it seems to be improving I can wait a little longer and see how it does before seeing an orthopedic doctor.)

Last night I dreamed I was in the hospital. In the dream--nightmare really--they kept me for several days so they could rack up a huge bill and when my foot still wasn't better they vigorously squeezed and twisted it with some sort of metal hook like thing! Then I woke up. 

I'm glad that didn't happen! I don't think it meant anything. Though the last part might have been triggered by the discomfort of wearing the boot. When I woke up my foot was hurting. I massaged it a little through a gap in the boot which helped.

I don't know why any of this happened, of course. And I very much wish it hadn't! But one good thing is that it’s been a wake up of sorts. It has reminded me that I don’t know what the future holds. I need to make good use of the time and abilities that I have while I have them. If I am ever going to write a book, for example (which I'm thinking about--BTW), then I need to start working on it while I still can. I can still type and I have some of my wits about me. So there’s no excuse. There will never be the “perfect time” to do it. If I keep waiting for that or any other sort of “magical” thing to happen to make me perfectly sure and confident before I start then I’ll never start. 

Waiting for a perfect time to do something (which of course never comes) is one of the traps of perfectionism according to Stephen Guise in his book “How to Be an Imperfectionist.” I started reading that this spring. That resonated at the time but now it feels like it’s being chiseled into my brain. 

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It is now several days since I started writing this post and I just want to finish it and post it. I took a couple of days off from everything this week--just laid around and listened to audio books and rested. The soft tissue around the fifth metatarsal is still really painful and it doesn't have much support or protection compared to other parts of my foot so I took the executive decision to stay off it more. I've been told that soft tissue like tendons and ligaments can take as long, or longer, than bone to heal. I really don't want to make things take longer by my impatience and unrealistic expectations. 

There are lots of other things I could write about that have happened since my last blog post. But I need to save them for another time or this will never be done and it will be so long no one will read it!