Cheilectomy Day 5

This is the first day off the pain meds. I swapped over to one 200mg ibuprofen in the morning and the evening, supplemented with a 500mg paracetamol during the day. It was fine, but I really needed that ibuprofen when I went to bed tonight!

This is probably due to increased activity - I was moving around a fair bit, and sat on the sofa watching a movie last night with the foot on a stool - and there was less time with the foot raised above heart level.

I can move the toe a bit now, just gently downwards - haven't attempted trying to bend it upwards yet. I do gentle exercises - rotating the ankles on both legs, gently flexing the ankle back and forth, and using a stretchy band on the non-surgical foot to stretch the calf muscles, keeping both legs elevated up a wall and feeling the lovely flow of fresh blood as I lower them down to waist level again.

It helps to bring a bit of massage to the feet, the ankles, the toes and the calves all benefit from stimulating the blood flow. There's a little bit of bruising to the surgery side ankle where I kicked off when I was being stuck for the surgeon to find the nerve on the day of surgery.

I bruise really easily - and it's normally long-lasting - so this is no surprise.

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Cheilectomy 5 months

As each month milestone approaches, it feels like the toe is worst than the month before, but when I read back, I can see that's a fallacy. I guess, as it gets better, I just measure its progress day by day, so some days it feels worse and some days it feels better. And that's kinda the lesson learned in this post. For example, the last couple of weeks we've had a cold snap in the UK (temperatures down to -2 in the daytime), so I've had to swap the trainers to more suitable walking boots (something I couldn't wear last month). I've been in the walking boots every day now for a couple of weeks. It feels roomier than when I tried the boots last month, so that indicates the swelling (from Covid probably) has gone down. It's more comfortable to wear the boots now, so clearly that's progress. I've been doing around five miles in them, but do find that it's a matter of one day on, one day off. So if I do a five mile walk one day, I'm not up for a...

Cheilectomy Day 6

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