Two Weeks Notice

Good news: I’ve been much more active this week and am getting back into my normal routine — work, exercising, spending time with my husband and friends. Bad news (for this blog, anyway): That means I’m not on the couch 24/7 with nothing to do. This is supposed to be my two weeks post-surgery update, so let’s just use our imaginations and pretend I posted this five days ago, mmkay?

After scaling back from two crutches to one, last Saturday (11 days after surgery) was the first day I did not touch a crutch or a pill at all, which was a wonderful feeling. On Monday, I headed to Indianapolis for my two-week follow-up appointment and a PT session. My incision is healing well, so I got my stitches out and got a pleasant surprise, too: They’re already weaning me out of my walking boot! The trade-off is a bulky, lace-up ankle brace that I wear from 8 a.m.-4 p.m., which results in some attractive work outfits like this: 

Yeah, you love it.

They warned me the brace probably wouldn’t fit in any shoe except a sneaker, and while I tried valiantly to wear it with ballet flats, it just wasn’t happening. Still, it beats clomping around in a boot all day. (I still have to wear it in the evenings for now.)

My surgeon, Dr. Porter, also cleared me to drive, swim, and increase my time on the stationary bike. My physical therapy exercises this week include heel raises on both feet in parallel, a stair stretch for my Achilles, and manually stretching my foot and ankle into a pointed position, all done three times a day. I can also try gentle plies and eleves in ballet positions facing the barre.

Up until my two-week appointment, I’ll admit I was babying my ankle, not sure how much movement or weight it could handle and afraid I would rip out the stitches. Now I know it’s OK to push myself within reason — it’s important to be aggressive in my stretching to make sure my range of motion returns. It’s still a little spooky to see how stiff my ankle is, but I gained 12 degrees of dorsiflexion (flexing) and 3 degrees of plantar flexion (pointing) between my one- and two-week appointments — and that was when I was wearing my boot all the time. Now that I’m in the ankle brace, which allows much more movement, this positive trend should only continue.

My next appointment isn’t until August, which is a welcome break in traveling since my surgeon’s office is several hours away! I'll continue to post updates on here as I see changes and improvements.