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Cheilectomy - Day 17

Still resting and icing and elevating. And the area of the surgery is still stiff, swollen and sore. But that's to be expected.

I've been reading lots of blogs and other literature on the recovery to see if I can track my recovery. There are variables obviously - age, fitness, healing propensity, type of surgery and so forth - but it's really helpful (and often reassuring) to track your recovery along side similar experiences of folk who have had the same procedures. 

My go-to's are these:

https://jemesouviens2004.com/2016/06/

https://cheilectomy-surgery-experience.northwoodswebdesigns.com/

https://cheilectomyexperience.blogspot.com/2013/07/table-of-contents-full-history.html?m=1

I've started doing my physio stretches as directed - 2 times a day for 5 minutes each session. There's really not much flex there at the moment (it IS quite swollen) and reading the other blogs, that seems to be fairly standard at this point, just over 2 weeks post-op. The dorsal flex (pulling the toe up) is actually fine and doesn't put too much pressure on the joint. Perhaps a little surprisingly, it's the plantar flex (pushing the toe down) that is sore. Perhaps due to the osteotomy I had alongside the cheilectomy.



The toe does appear to still be a little numb - the sensation when I stroke arose the top (under the nail) and the tip is really quite numb still. Not sure if this is usual, but given that there's still a lot of swelling, I'll just keep an eye on that. 


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