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Week 5

I've started swimming again - yay! - and the salt water has helped move the incision wound into a better place. No scabs now, just a fresh pink line of new skin. Been walking more in a pair of new trainer/walking shoes a half size up from what I normally wear with a thick sole. 


Walked to the park and around a small circle for the first time since the operation. Did the walk in 40 mins - usually takes me 20 - and I just concentrated on trying to make the gait as normal as possible. Hobbling around over the weekend took it out of the knee and made the foot pretty fatigued. 


Getting around on the cycle now - shopping, visiting folk, getting to the beach. 

The biggest thing at the moment is the sensation I get underneath the MTP joint. It feels like I'm stepping on a big wadge of something. I'm guessing this will be swelling. It probably takes around 6 weeks for bones to start to be healed. I had an osteotomy and a screw in there, so it's probably this not settled yet, and swelling. And sometimes at night it feels like there's a rod from the tip of the big toe back into the heel that I could just pull out to relieve the odd feeling. I reckon this is the nerve. It seems to be improving so may have something to do with the healing process and the nerve block they use in surgery. 

I haven't done much exercise over the last 4 weeks, so now that I am starting to walk, I could feel that calf muscle had tightened up a lot. A few days walking around now has stretched that and it's feeling more normal. No cramps at all anymore. The outside of the surgery foot, underneath, feels a bit odd, like there's something stuck to my sole that I'm walking on. It feels a little 'nobbly' to the touch, so may be something to do with walking oddly on the side of the that foot to save the toe. Hope that goes away as I get back to more 'normal' walking.

Doing the usual PT, pushing the toe to flexion (dorsal and plantar) and holding it to about 4/5 pain for 5 minutes twice a day. Sometimes that does elicit a clicking at the joint - alway 2 clicks - when I push it back and forth, and the plantar flexion is harder and sorer than the dorsal flexion. That seems to be most people's experience from reading other blogs and commentaries. 

Today I'll start the weight-bearing exercises. 


Instructions: standing facing a wall. Place your recovering foot one step backwards, steady yourself against the wall with your hands and start lifting the heal of the recovering foot off the ground (while keeping the big toe flat on the floor). Stop at the point of discomfort and push down on the ground with little bouncing movements for 30 seconds. Relax and do this again 5 times in the morning and the same at night. In order to recover the full movement in the joint, it is necessary to push to the limit of the joint movement - it will be uncomfortable and will make the joint ache for a bit afterwards. As the saying goes:

No pain, no gain.

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