More Surgery Stats

The title really does say it all.  Today marks another entry in the very long milestone marking process of my ankle surgery recovery.

I should say up front that I am not keeping track of all of these modest progress points either to brag or to engage in some kind of elongated self-loathing exercise.  To the contrary, I keep kicking around a longer project about disability and athletics, and I am hoping that the discipline, so to speak, of forcing myself to write about all of this might actually help that project get off of the ground.  We will see, though.  I somehow always seem to find other work to do.

In really broad terms, I am very very very, very very very, very very, very very very slowly making my way toward the end of the most incapacitating part of the post-surgery recovery process.  February 28, 2019 actually marked the first full day that my right foot lived outside of any kind of brace or splint or boot since November 6, 2018.

However, February 28, 2019 also maked the day when my right foot told me that it wasn’t quite ready to live on its own as it once did in the halcyon days of four months ago, and so it is now back in the brace as a means to beat back some modest swelling and soreness.  I’m also trying to sleep in a compression sock to keep the swelling down at night.

This is all normal, I have been reassured.  But it is still frustrating.  My belly is getting bigger and bigger the more that my exercise regimen amounts solely to walking to and from work and ten easy minutes on an exercise bike a few times a week.  My clothes are starting not to fit properly, which is just a miserable feeling, and every can of beer that I drink feels like a massively sinful indulgence.

I am not giving up beer.

So this is where things, ahem, stand, ever so precariously.  And here are some additional stats:

1/20/19—first day walking up and down stairs with lace-up brace and shoe

1/21/19—first day walking on a treadmill for twenty minutes (to avoid a “polar vortex”)

1/24/19—first day wearing actual dress pants since 11/6/18

1/25/19—approximate date when the surgical incision fully healed

2/5/19—10 minutes on exercise bike; first day of exercise since September 17, 2018

2/12/19—first day fully placing right foot in a shoe without a brace since the morning of November 7, 2018; first day walking barefoot as well

2/17/19—first day standing in the shower since the morning of surgery

2/19/19—first day walking up and down stairs in a shoe, without bracing of any kind

2/21/19—first day walking outside in a shoe without bracing; first attempt at exercise bike without brace

3/2/19—return to brace (for some time) to control soreness and swelling

–March 2, 2019