Looking Forward to Surgery

That's it! Another Jr. Jazz season finished. I have been waiting for this day for about a month now. I think I've told you a little about my foot, but maybe not quite everything.

It started several months ago when I had some unexplained foot pain (although now we believe we know the cause). I visited the pain doc and he suggested it might be nerve pain, but the fix didn't help. So I scheduled another visit and the doc shot it full of cortisone. That worked for a little while, but periodically it would feel like someone was trying to pull my heel right off the back of my foot.

Next stop was a nerve specialist for an EMG. But when he examined my foot, he suggested an MRI. I was able to squeeze that in right before the end of December. The MRI revealed a longitudinal tear in one of the tendons on the outside of my foot. Unfortunately, the only way to repair it is with surgery.

If you remember, the last time I had surgery, I ended up with an embolism that nearly killed me and kept me for several more days in the hospital and six months on blood thinners. I also didn't want to let down my two Jr. Jazz teams, one for Baby Doll and one for Curly. Crazy though, I also coached 2 games for Sport this season and one for Taco, so my Saturdays have been dominated for weeks.

When talks of surgery came up, it was easy to tell the doc in mid January that I didn't want to have my foot fixed until Jr. Jazz was over. Sadly, the last few weeks have been brutal and I finally asked the doc to get me on the schedule.

I have known for a couple of weeks now that on February 17, President's Day, I would be heading in to finally have this tendon taken care of. It's hard to feel like you are just getting worse with no possibility of getting better. And even though I'm still pretty nervous about the surgery, my doctor has a plan that will put me on blood thinners right after the surgery and he is certain that will take care of a possible blood clot.

So I have one more week to get things finished up before I go under the knife. Then it's supposed to be a boot for 6 weeks. Although I'm sure that is recovery time when the patient is 16 years old and in perfect health. Maybe 6 months will be a little more realistic for me.

I told my sweetie not to feed me while I am down. When I had my ACL surgery 20 years ago, I lost 40 lbs because it was too hard to get up and feed myself. I figure a foot has to be worth at least 10 or 15, don't you think?