Day 27 - Stiff toes

So it turns out that when you have your bones broken and realigned, they don't bend so well afterwards!

I'm not quite sure what I was expecting, but I somehow didn't realise that after this surgery I would barely be able to move my toes. After Monday's little episode at the hospital, I thought I would start on my toe flexion and extension exercises. To perform these you have to hold your foot firmly over the main boney part (where the bones were realigned) and then bending the toe down and upwards from the joint at the base of the toe. Due to my hyper mobility, I have always been really flexible in this area, being able to bend my toes virtually under my feet. I always used to pretend I was a ballet dancer (with the exception of the terrible balance due to awful bunions!)

These exercises are sooo painful. On Tuesday I could not perform these without crying. I don't know how to describe the pain but it shot right up through my body each time, particularly when pulling upwards, down wasn't so bad. I could hardly move the toes at all and was also getting upset as I couldn't see how I'd ever be able to move my toes in the same way again. This would mean not being able to wear heels, not dancing and finding walking/running painful.

I might've been slightly premature in panicking however as it is now Thursday and the mobility has already improved - can't say I'm Darcey Bussell yet, but I can definitely move them a little further and so am sure that if I keep up the routine every day for a few weeks that this will get better and better.

The exercise programme has me doing 3x sets of 5 repetitions down and then up on each foot, 4 times a day. This takes a while, but I know it's important to do right. My surgeon informed me that if it isn't painful, I'm not doing it right. So whilst I would usually be worrying about the pain that I'm damaging something, I know I have to grin and bear it if I want to regain the motion again.

I often worry that there's not enough "light" to this blog, that most of it is me moaning or saying how hard it is or down I am - however I wanted it to be a completely honest account of how I have felt, and I don't think that sugar coating anything is going to benefit anyone considering surgery or going through recovery. I loved reading others' blogs before and during my recovery, however I longed for more detail about the day to day stuff and feelings that people experienced, as I spent so much of those first few weeks worrying about every little thing, and everyone else I read about seemed to have such a smooth and easy recovery. I think if I'd gone into this expecting it to be really hard, it might have been less of a shock to me and I'd have coped better.

To add to the above, I would also say that yes it has been really hard, but all of that pales into insignificance if this whole thing ends up being worth it. Now at this point I can't say for definite if it has been worth it, I'm currently just shy of four weeks post op and I know that I won't experience the results until later down the line, at least when I am walking and potentially wearing new shoes. However, what I do know is that my new feet look fantastic, I no longer have that awful boney bump on the side of my foot, instead it's a lovely straight shape and I'm sure that it will be so much more comfortable in shoes. I also have a nice big toe that is flatter on my right foot and the nail already looks to be improving, it used to be very swollen from rubbing just below the nail, however I can certainly see a reduction in the swelling, excluding the fact it's swollen already from the surgery. All in all this looks to be a great positive start and so providing I can get my toes to bend and I don't end up with any nerve problems or lasting pain, then I know that all of this will have been worth it.

Thought I would round this post up with some photos of my toes being bent so I can compare in a few weeks of exercises. These were taken at the end of a round of exercises so had limbered up a little by this point:

This is my left foot before being flexed

My left foot with the toe being pulled up - this toe stretches further than the right one

Bending my right big toe, this one is stiffer than the left

Bending the toe down on the right foot, this is significantly less painful than pulling the toe up

Important to note that usually for doing these exercises my other hand is holding the foot firmly, however I needed this hand to take the photos.