u/wetwillycf

I just had reconstruction surgery last Tuesday on 7/28 (I’m 9 days post-op). I’ve spent a ton of time with Gemini (Google’s AI tool) understanding the mechanics, process, everything to do with this surgery and during my process found personal stories on this sub to be the most beneficial to read. I wanted to give my story in case other folks feel the same!

My background: flat feet my whole life, Marine Corps 1998-2007, numerous back injuries (grade 2 spondy of my L5-S1, spinal stenosis, degenerative disc disease, the works). For decades I assumed my back was my only real injury but discovered upon visiting a podiatrist in 2023 (I thought it would be smart) I discovered that my feet are at least as bad if not worse. It’s very apparent that my Marine Corps experience took my flat feet and wrecked them (and my back among other things) and I’ve been on a long-term collision course with problems and now I just had my first ever surgery.

I noticed pain in my ankle early last Fall and in November I got an appointment with the Podiatrist for 12/29. Ten minutes into my visit he told me I needed to have surgery. I pushed the surgery to the summer for a variety of reasons.

Here’s what I had:

RIGHT FOOT CALCANEAL OSTEOTOMY, POSTERIOR TIBIAL TENDON REPAIR, FLEXOR DIGITORUM LONGUS TRANSFER, SPRING LIGAMENT REPAIR, ACHILLES LENGTHENING

I had some nerves the morning of my surgery but nothing really pronounced until they got the IV in and got the process going. I got two nerve blocks to start, they wheeled me in, and after 4 hours of surgery and 2 hours in the PACU, I met with my surgeon. The most interesting thing he told me for the purposes of this post was that the PTT was torn in a bunch of places and there was one really big tear. Pre-surgery he hoped to repair the tendon but needed to bridge it once in my foot and he saw the damage.

I was much more mentally able than I expected but in retrospect the fog wasn’t fully gone until the second day after surgery. I expected the pain to be awful but wasn’t afraid of it and to be honest, in my experience, the pain has been far easier to manage than I expected. It never got above a 5-6 and those levels were very short in duration/easily managed by meds. I did feel pain while waking up in the PACU and they gave me a 3rd nerve block (sciatic given on the outside of my knee).

The earliest stirrings of feeling were about 10 hours after surgery began so I started taking the Percocets at that time to avoid falling behind. It was probably the smartest thing I did with this surgery as I wasn’t sure to expect with regard to the nerve blocks. I only took them for about 36 hours and was then on 325mg Tylenol and 400mg Ibuprofen 3x per day. I stopped taking Ibuprofen 2 days ago and haven’t taken a Tylenol since 3am today when I had my first foot cramp.

The first two nerve blocks were 75% gone within 36 hours and the last one didn’t start going away until day 4. I still have some pins and needles, mainly in my toes, but the main thing I feel now is the nerves firing here and there, 85% of which happens when I lay in bed from 7-10pm before going to sleep.

I had a swelling breakthrough when I could feel space inside the splint about 4 days after surgery. I have basically only used my knee scooter thus far (no crutches yet) and encourage everyone to get some padding for it because there’s a cumulative, painful effect on my shin. I’ve read that getting the full cast next Weds will help alleviate that (among other things).

I’ve been super aggressive in being active for short spurts on the knee scooter - ten-ish minutes every hour and outside of that I’m toes above nose. I’ve been using a frozen water bottle under my knee 3-4x per day. As much time spent being toes above nose and icing behind knee is literally the key to my first 9 days. Don’t screw around with simply elevating or sitting upright - toes above nose. The overwhelming majority of this experience hinges on how seriously you are controlling your swelling. I think it’s super important to be active throughout the day to keep your blood flowing (and if you’re of a certain age avoiding blood clots) but I can’t stress enough how you have to find a way to be toes above nose the rest of the day period.

The hardest part of the recovery so far is that I’m terrified of accidentally standing on my foot or falling on it - I had a couple toe taps early on and one mild heel bang but I got a system going about 3 days in. I cannot recommend strongly enough how crucial it is to practice several actions before your surgery:

1. Butt scoot up and down stairs (especially standing up without using your foot)
2. Sitting on the toilet (getting up without using my foot was really hard for the first 5 days and I foolishly did not practice this)
3. Showering (practicing this was very revealing)

A couple random notes:

1. Your foot will get hot and sweaty. It is what it is
2. I raced to get off the Percocets as fast as I could and I think the biggest part of that was being so diligent in being nose above toes/icing
3. An adjustable base for your bed will make the difference (not cheap but I had one for my back already and it makes nose above toes 10x easier than stacking pillows

I know I have several milestones to hit, and though I’ve seen others say getting the full cast on sucks, I’m excited about my foot not having space inside the cast anymore, getting a slight respite of fresh air on my foot, and the slightest relief from worrying about banging my foot (I’ve read that the full cast is slightly more protective than the half cast/splint).

Overall, so far, this has been much less miserable than I expected. I know everyone’s journey will be different but I feel like I’ve seen more negative posts than positive ones here so I wanted to convey my overall (so far) positive experience. The rate at which my physical feeling improves continues to increase and I got an amazing night of sleep last night (two nights ago wasn’t great but I overdid it during the day and it took all night for my foot to calm down).

Let me know if you have any questions!

Edit: grammar