Cheilectomy week 9

Main things to report are continued exercise regime of walking and PT exercises (going up on the toe and 'bouncing' - this can be painful, but that's normal), scar care (I use Hustle Butter which is actually marketed for tattoo aftercare and contains shea, coconut, aloe, vitamin E and so on), and scar massaging using castor oil.

The walking gives some pain - mainly in the bone around the MTP joint (and the osteotomy site on the proximal phalanges) and all the way up the metatarsal bone along the foot. I'm guessing this is normal and I just need to ease off if it gets too much. It's a bit off-putting though because it feels like a burning pain much like I had before the operation (caused by the bone spurs). I do have a fair amount of diminished space between the proximal phalanges and first metatarsal due to loss of cartilage, so this may also be a factor (I will have to have a fusion at some point when this becomes too diminished).

Image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metatarsal_bones#/media/File:Ospied-en.svg

My post-op X-ray showing the proximal phalangectomy and diminished space where the cartilage has degraded.

My walking distances have definitely increased greatly as my stats show:

Comments

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 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 (...

Cheilectomy - Day 14

Lots of mobility now - whizzing around doing everything for myself, except shopping and walking the dog. Can walk ok in the surgical shoe and do stuff like preparing meals and washing up, getting up and down stairs, walking to the car. Still icing the foot just to ward off any swelling, wiggling the toe and stretching it. Sometimes, without warning it has a sudden ache - similar but not as intense to the pain I'd experience often before surgery. Went out to the local tea rooms for a couple of hours with the Sunday papers, so feeling a little more normal. Looking forward to tomorrow when I have my post-op appointment back at the hospital, and to losing the surgical shoe and the bulky bandages.

cheilectomy-diary

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