Question about cam boot

JustMeJen

Yeah, I had the super-size extra value meal repair surgery. I had a scope as well as the repairs. I thought I was actually going to have to have a 2nd surgery to remove a nodule of scar tissue that was quite painful from my Achilles which I tore with my grade III sprain in 2009 but the casting seems to have stretched that out and hopefully it stays gone. Once they're in there it might as well be done; it makes the incision about twice as long (although honestly mine healed so well that it looks smaller than a Brostrom incision unless you poke around and once the red areas when the bone anchors go away I won't even look like i had a Brostrom without getting close. It's the gift of 10 weeks of steri-strips/sutures) but it is just an extension of that incision. It added quite of bit of recovery time since I wasn't WBing in 2 shoes with a brace until 16 weeks and not full-time until more like 18 weeks and most of the pain/soreness was in the peroneals but I'm glad it was all done at once. I'd been seeing a podiatrist who was talking about just a Brostrom. I'm not sure if he would have eventually figured out the peroneals were torn too or if he would have let that slide and forced me to have a 2nd surgery later but I'm glad I didn't find out the hard way. The only reason I didn't have him do the surgery is that I am on a med that has complications with anesthesia and needed to be at the major hospital where they can handle this and he didn't have OR privileges there.

Bubble wrap is just frustrating. I had to delay surgery for 5 years for various reasons and I was braced through that time and had a lot of things I couldn't do/wouldn't consider trying. I was in lace-ups at first but was ruining one every 3 weeks by inverting so I wound up in a heavy duty brace that worked well for me until the day I went out for just a few steps without it which pushed the surgery. I could do plenty in the brace, I lifted people at work without problems and I did low-impact aerobics and walked for exercise but now I can do whatever I want as long as I wear my brace for high risk activities. That's much different than wearing a brace and being careful at the same time. (Not that I'm actually going to run out and play basketball today but I'm theoretically allowed although I think he meant a little further down the road and may have said that).

I hope this is your last surgery. My mom has declared I won't be having more. I had a bunch of gyn issues and because of my age had surgery first to try to resolve them without a hysterectomy so that was done one year and the next I had a hysterctomy. And this was 2 years after that. I'm ready to be done as well and hopefully this is it. I have been diagnosed with mild PTTD bilaterally so I'm hoping that never worsens and that fixing everything will prevent further stress on that injury. I don't want to even think of another foot/ankle surgery. Once was more than enough.

I knew someone when he was in the surgical cast phase of recovery from the procedures I had done plus some and he told me not to put it off until I couldn't walk without it. I suppose I kind of did since I had torn it up so badly by the time I went to surgery that walking was not good. But I am glad that serious arthritis hadn't developed. I had a lot of junk cleaned out of the joint with the scope so that would have happened eventually.

Now to just get the balance back so that I don't sprain the other side! (I am just clumsy enough to do that).

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Modified Brostrom, Peroneal repair and scope 6/13/14

ankle problems

Wow that sounds like a crazy value meal surgery- but makes sense- you only have to go through the entire long recovery only once.
16 weeks is long- after Brostrom in 2013, I was NWB for 4 weeks, PWB for 4 weeks, and then in cam boot for another 4 weeks. But compared to my Brostrom 8 years ago, this was a breeze, I had a huge fiber glass cast for 10 weeks- mostly NWB because you can't put fiber glass on the floor. I had to learn how to walk all over again after that.
You must be very patient- I can't imagine managing an unstable ankle for 5 years.
I feel like my life is on hold- I can't travel, I always thought I would have a baby by now- my gynecologist told me to not even think about it- until I have no sprains or pain, and I get some of my strength back. My sisters have all had fertility issues so honestly every year that passes, my stress and anxiety goes up. I also wonder what so many painkillers and anesthesia will do to my body. My husband keeps telling me to just relax and focus on my leg, but I can't stop worrying.
I understand your mom's concern- you have been through a lot! With all my foot surgeries, my mom got so stressed out that I decided not to tell her about my most recent one. They live far away, and will just lose sleep!

Let's hope we both lose the clumsy side! :-)

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1/6/2015- Peroneal tendonoscopy, debridement, *** (right ankle)
2/19/2014- Nerve decompression (left knee)
3/13/2013- Modified Brostrom (right ankle)
6/12/2006- Modified Brostrom (left ankle)

JustMeJen

My doctor was really conservative on top of the mutliple procedures. I don't know how much was his usual and if there was more caution because of how long I waited; I am not sure that everyone gets a walking cast with him but I only think that because at one point he said I'd get a boot around 8 weeks and his resident said at 6 weeks. Instead I got the walking cast at 6 weeks and it came off at 10. That may have intentionally been to take care of my Achilles issue too; they didn't explain a lot and sometimes I didn't think to ask. My podiatrist planned a crazy quick Brostrom recovery-he said 2 weeks in a cast, 2 weeks in a boot and then a few weeks in a brace. I'm glad he didn't do the surgery...Not thrilled with him anyway because he also didn't do anything about the MRI reporting saying that there was something on the edge of the scan on my Achilles that it recommended be scanned again and that was my nodule before it got painful. I think if he'd noticed that and casted it early on I might have avoided some pain. But I wasn't complaining that my Achilles hurt so maybe he thought it was nothing.

My casts were extra large as well, from above normal at the knee to over my toes at the foot. My niece thought it was pretty funny that I couldn't tell what toes I was wiggling and she liked to look into the cast and tell me if I was moving all 5. The longer cast did what it was supposed to do and protected my toes but made steps really hard. I had to have home health PT at 2 weeks to help me get up the stairs safely because I couldn't bend my knee behind me enough and with it sticking straight out I would catch it and tip. I had to get really strong at hopping with it awkwardly far out using one crutch.

I am sure having to wait on all this joint stuff to have a baby is so hard. I would have had a much harder time waiting to have this surgery if I had something big waiting on recovery like that. I guess it gives you something to really look forward to. Don't focus too much on your sisters. I know that's hard but my mom had a very hard time getting pregnant with me and then I had early menopause starting around age 33 or so. My mom also had early menopause. My sister has been fine and has 2 girls that were born when she was 31 and 34 and she hasn't had issues with early menopause or any other issues that I had signs of (my gyn thought I had symptoms of PCOS although my ovaries were clear; I had a number of symptoms though and that seemed reasonable although when my tubes were removed they had narrowed so much that the pain had been from eggs getting stuck which was kind of a huh? diagnosis that was just weird. There are so many factors at play with fertility just being your healthiest self is the best thing you can do. Which I'm sure doesn't help since you've had to be patient through so much but at least this time you are hopefully on the other side of this orthopedic mess.

I think after dealing with orthopedic issues for a long time it becomes hard to believe they are ever going away. I'm doing so well but every so often step on a cat toy or take a misstep or something and even when the ankle holds I have to remind myself that it wasn't a fluke, that it is going to hold up from now on. I have a feeling that's going to remain until spring when I am not trapped at home by ice and snow so much (the thing I will not test this leg out on). When you have something waiting for you I'm sure that's even more true. But they will get better. When the dr started talking about basketball and tennis after 5 years of that not being something I could think about I knew that I had the proof that this really does work, given time to heal and all that.

I know though that "take it one thing at a time" can be the hardest advice on earth to follow. It is for me with many things. I thought that would improve as I got older and wiser but it definitely did not . It doesn't seem to matter who says it, it just isn't advice that comes naturally to me. At all. Ever. No matter what they say to enforce it. I think if I ever learn that it will be the biggest life lesson I master, possibly.

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Modified Brostrom, Peroneal repair and scope 6/13/14

ankle problems

Thanks a lot JustMeJen! With every surgery, my positivity and optimism dies a little bit. Talking to you is like talking to a therapist, it gives me some positive vibes! I really appreciate you sharing your journey with me- really gives me some perspective.

Off topic- how do you handle the smell from the cam boot?

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1/6/2015- Peroneal tendonoscopy, debridement, *** (right ankle)
2/19/2014- Nerve decompression (left knee)
3/13/2013- Modified Brostrom (right ankle)
6/12/2006- Modified Brostrom (left ankle)

JustMeJen

Honestly, and this is gross, I was too afraid to wash it (even though I wore it in August and September) so I just tried to pretend it didn't smell. It at least smelled better than my last cast. But I did eventually wash the liner and dried it on low in the machine. It says that it shouldn't be dried but other people said they had done so and I figured it was worth a try. It came out fine. I think I just set the dryer low and for only 20 minutes at a time and checked it until it was dry. It got kind of nasty though; it not only smelled like foot it had all this grass that got caught in the solid part behind the boot thing every time I went to the dog park which was pretty much daily (I didn't go in the fence unless it was just our dog who I trusted not to bowl me over but I took walks if nothing else). I kept meaning to try odor eaters but never managed to remember to buy them; I thought maybe if they were in the boot overnight they might help. Maybe you could put a cloth bag of baking soda in there for the same effect but cheaper? (Don't know why I didn't think of that months ago).

Glad I can help. I've been through some of the pile everything up at once thing and it was emotionally one of the harder things I've been through. I tore my ankle up in 12/09 but it wasn't comfortable until 5/10. That same month I started working at a place that I absolutely loved and where I would have been happy to work the rest of my life.I have bipolar disorder that is severe and hard to control so I knew I probably wouldn't work forever but it was doing well then and work was finally going very well. In November of 2010 I came down with whooping cough. I was vaccinated as a kid but in half doses because I was very allergic and so I didn't get immunity. I was really sick for a month or so but my lungs just couldn't recover. I wound up with allergic asthma and allergies to seemingly everything I breathed in. I can't use oral steroids without getting extremely manic and the inhaled ones aren't good for me so my mood was unstable all the time while trying to get the asthma under control. Eventually work discovered black mold everywhere and when that was fixed things improved a bit. But at the same time I was having major gyn issues and had surgery scheduled for August 2011. I had to go off work a little before my surgery for better pain control because I couldn't stand up anymore whenever my right ovary (turned out to be tube) was annoyed. We planned to remove it during surgery but couldn't find anything wrong (because it was the tube and I don't think the problem with the tube was visible until it was removed and they cut through it). I had a very bad drug reaction after that and my bipolar spun completely out of control. I tried to go back to work but my supervisors and I agreed I wasn't ready so I stayed off longer, ultimately knowing that I had worked as long as I could. And it was also clear that working in the extremely polluted area where I worked plus being in very unclean homes was making my asthma much, much worse. As far as the asthma went I couldn't even work in a different job because what I'm trained to do generally involves being around chemicals that I can't breathe in now. All that time I knew I needed ankle surgery and then it was pretty obvious I needed a hysterectomy and then that became certain and was scheduled but with a several month wait. I didn't have insurance at the time but Cleveland Clinic provided free care and my hysterectomy was covered that way. So that left the ankle waiting even longer because I wasn't about to ask them to cover a 2nd surgery that I could have done when I had Medicare. THen I got Medicare and 6 weeks later hurt my ankle badly again and that led to surgery 3 months after that injury. So I've been through having one medical thing on top of another until you have no idea where to look without seeing a medical issue or complication. Aside from having influenza (and probably my 2nd strain of it this year; my mom keeps bringing things home and I catch them) for my birthday present today I'm really finally past all the medical drama. Even today I am trying hard to avoid needing to treat my asthma beyond my usual daily med and agitating myself and so far I've made it. But it is still hard to know I have to spend the next few days being very still to prevent coughing spells (that and I don't feel good enough to do anything). I'm so glad to have all of that behind me. So much stress and loss with health problems, especially ones that stretch out for a long time. At least influenza goes away eventually.

It seems like so long ago my ankle was frustrating (aside from the snow/ice thing and that is just life) and I know it wasn't. I don't know if I could have faced going back for more; even thinking I might have to have Achilles surgery later was really disturbing. So I know you are in a hard position. But I also know you can make it through.

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Modified Brostrom, Peroneal repair and scope 6/13/14