It could be worse. That’s what I keep telling myself. I have an open wound on the top of my left foot that’s about 4 square inches. Several of my tendons are exposed, and I’m going to lose the one connected to my second toe. (It’s ok, though. Several doctors have reassured me that it’s not an important tendon.) I’ve had this wound for a couple of months now, and despite our best efforts, it’s just not healing fast enough. So it’s time for more surgeries. At least two of them.
It’s now been 70 days since my original surgery, and at this point, an optimistic outlook is that my foot might be almost as good as it was before the original surgery. We’re probably looking at at least another month or two before I can start physical therapy. So, if it goes well from here on out, we’ll be looking at over 100 days of crutching around, 5 surgeries, about 20 doctor appointments, about 60 hours in a hyperbaric chamber, one allergic reaction with an ER visit, and only a single fall down the stairs.
Currently, we’re looking at two more surgeries to hopefully get things back on track, but my surgeon is setting the odds of this one finishing the job at 50/50. If this fails, then we’re looking at a more drastic surgery with a much longer recovery and increased liklihood of losing some meaningful functionality in my left foot. According to the doctors, there’s still a good amount of risk, and no way to know how it will unfold or how long it will take until this is a distant memory. Until then, it’s just one day at a time.