Why did I allow myself to think that the saga of my right foot was approaching a peaceful conclusion?
Surely that optimism doomed me to more complications.
To review: In September, I had surgery on my foot. The procedure included an implant placed in my second toe to straighten it. I had named the troublesome toe “Clyde.” The rest of my foot healed up nicely. I didn’t even have a scar.
But Clyde remained fat and swollen. Podiatrists have a name for this: Sausage Toe. Really. Google it.
First, Clyde rejected a deep suture. My doctor removed it, and luckily, there was no infection. Clyde perked up a bit, but did not lose any weight. I had an x-ray taken in December, which showed the unthinkable. The implant had broken.
How could this have happened? The titanium alloy implant was in a bone. The bone was not broken. Although my dogs (one 40 pounds, one 80) had stepped on my foot a few times, that hardly would have done this level of damage. I probably would have had to drop a load of bricks on Clyde, and then the bone would have broken too.
A little research showed that, occasionally, these implants do break. Just like that. There was no use crying over what couldn’t be changed. I had to have the darn thing removed, and a pin put in.
I wasn’t particularly worried about this next procedure. We scheduled it for late January. Although Clyde was still swollen, he wasn’t bothering me as much as before. I was able to travel to Boston and walk around a huge convention center without pain.
The day of my surgery arrived. The procedure was delayed an hour—things were just running late. I buzzed for a nurse because I wanted my phone so I could text my husband, paul. When she arrived, she seemed a bit grumpy that I had summoned her even though I wasn’t turning green or writhing.
After seeing me into the pre-op area, Paul had returned home to feed our dogs and cats their lunch. As it turned out, he was walking back into the hospital as I texted him about the delay. He turned around and went back home for awhile. Luckily, we only live a few miles from the medical center.
The procedure went smoothly, and Paul joined me in the recovery room. After enjoying a snack of crackers and juice, I watched with interest as the nurse removed the sheet that covered me and prepared to fit me into my surgical shoe.
Then I recoiled in horror. There was a pin sticking out of the tip of mu toe. The visible portion was half an inch long, with a plastic bobble on the end.
Now, I knew there was going to be a pin, but I didn’t imagine it was going to protrude from my toe. The nurse and I wondered how I was going to get the big hospital sock over it. In the end, we just put on the shoe. It was one of those mild days we had last month, and I was going right home.
The next few days were not pleasant. The bandage kept sliding off. I finally put the big sock on, though I was afraid I was going to push the pin farther into my toe. (I didn’t.) I had more pain than the first time round. That probably wasn’t surprising, as Clyde was irritable to begin with, and now he had been sliced open again.
I had to take more time off from work than I had anticipated. Finally, nearly a week later, it was time to visit the doctor again.
I’d had a restless night, and I could see the bandage had come loose within the sock. But I didn’t want to deal with it. I just strapped on the shoe and headed out.
When I arrived at the office, the secretaries were startled at the appearance of my foot. Most of the bandage was balled up in the toe of the sock, which was hanging off the front edge of the surgical shoe.
"I just couldn’t deal with it anymore,” I said. The podiatrist was equally taken aback. “You should have come in and had me rewrap it. And is that the sandal they gave you? It looks too small.”
The good news is that when the bandage was properly unraveled, Clyde looked good, considering. The pin still resembled some kind of medieval torture device, but I felt much better with a fresh wrapping of gauze and compression tape.
The doctor gave me a giant surgical sandal that looked like something an elderly man would wear in the sauna at the Y. Luckily it was black, so it wasn’t noticeable under a pair of black trousers. I returned to work the next day.
I still had two weeks to go before my doctor was going to remove my pin. I was supposed to get an x-ray in the meantime. But the following Friday, it snowed. On Saturday, I just didn’t feel like walking through the white stuff in my sandal, so I planned to get the x-ray on Monday instead.
That night, when I took off my sock to rewrap my foot, I stared in horror at what I saw. The whole bandage was in the bottom of the sock, with the pin — the entire pin — sticking straight up from the bottom!
I was speechless for a minute or two. The pin was four inches long! Then I found my voice and called to Paul. My toe was bleeding. I wrapped it in gauze and called the doctors’ office.
Luckily, my own podiatrist was on call that night. He had told me the pin might loosen, but I wasn’t sure about it popping out. He said not to worry; the toe had healed, and that’s why the pin emerged. I was to come to the office on Monday. “That darn toe,” he added. “It’s nothing but trouble.”
Of course, I “toe-tally” agreed.
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