Frankenfoot

WARNING: This post contains graphic photos of a naked foot.  Don't say I didn't warn you.

So I have been in bed forever.  I am surprised that my Netflix account doesn't sigh and say, "You AGAIN, Katie Willden?" every time I log on.  I've read a few books.  Meh.  I have gotten quite a bit of Seminary prep done, which is good considering I had been putting it off all summer knowing I was going to be bedridden in August, anyway.  I caught up on several months worth of Cake Wrecks posts--that was pretty fun, actually.  I could use some more Olympics action, but unfortunately that's all over.  (What was your favorite London moment?  Discuss.)  So I figure since I am stuck in bed and Netflix and I are on a break, maybe I should catch up the blog before school starts in a week and it becomes all New Testament, all the time.  So here goes.

We took an excellent vacation in July (more on that to come).  So much fun.  Upon arriving home I immediately got back into the biking to the pool and swimming laps routine I had been enjoying all summer, and in a moment of virtuous good-for-me energy I decided to add on some resistance training in order to counteract all of the vacation calories.  One morning as I was doing step-ups at the bottom of our stairs, I came down on my right foot very badly, heard something pop, and collapsed on the floor.  I spent a couple of minutes rolling around in agony, then when I could talk I called Greg and gasped out something like, "Hurt foot.  On floor.  Come home now."  He came home, eased off my shoe, and assessed the situation.  When he said I should probably try to stand on it, I started to cry because it hurt so much just laying there.  Went to the foot doctor (lately I see him more often than I do most of my family members), x-rays were inconclusive, but an MRI later showed that the foot was not broken but badly sprained.  Here's the first gross foot shot:

The writing on the foot is where the foot doctor poked me and made me cry.  I cried a lot that day.  The irony of the whole situation is that when I sprained the foot, I already had an appointment to have surgery on the same foot three weeks later.  I had already been planning on being out of commission, but I was planning on having three more weeks of biking, swimming, and, you know, walking around without pain.  I was bummed.

BUT...  The good news is that my mom got here a few days before the surgery to stay for three whole weeks, to take care of Ella and Nat so I could convalesce.  Yay!  The morning after she arrived, I was downstairs enjoying my Frosted Mini Wheats when I heard a thump, some crying, and my mom saying, "Go put some Neosporin on it." (Incidentally, that's what she probably would have told me to do about my foot as I was rolling around on the floor--she's very big on the healing properties of Neosporin.)  So Ella came downstairs and I inspected what I assumed was a trifling injury.  She had turned around and run into the edge of a door, and she was a bit bloody around the eyebrow.  I was wondering where the Neosporin was when she rubbed her eyes and the wound gaped open.  Oh!  Suddenly I was very calmly calling all the nurses I know, one of whom said to just take her to urgent care, which I did.  Three stitches later, here we were:

(Actually, I took that picture yesterday.  For a couple of days after the injury she had a pretty nice shiner.)

And two days later I had surgery!  Fun for all.  I had a chevron bunionectomy, which was almost as fun as it sounds.  Actually, the surgery itself was fine.  The conversations between the nurses and the anesthesiologist were like a comedy routine, and the drugs worked like a dream.  It was all unbelievably easy until an hour after I got home, when I became horribly sick.  Dang those drugs, lulling me into a sense of health and happiness.  I got over it, only to have a horrible psychedelic nightmare that made me think that maybe the narcotics (Codeine) I had been taking for pain weren't such a good idea.

Since then, I have been taking it easy.  The foot generally doesn't feel too bad unless I walk on it, which I try not to do.  When the bandages were removed at my post-op appointment, this is what was revealed:

I'm kind of in awe of how gross it looks, but it also does not look like I have a bunion anymore, which is good.  And I'll be back in the pool in a couple weeks, so look out Missy Franklin!  (Not really.  I am almost a foot shorter than her, probably many pounds heavier, and literally old enough to be her mother.  But boy, can she backstroke!)