Hardware Removal

Thursday was the much anticipated day of surgery to have P's external fixator on her foot removed! She had an early report time of 0530, but only went into surgery around 0730. It took Doc G about 15 minutes to remove the fixator, hold P's foot up by the pins and try to move them (he was testing the strength of the new bone), unscrew the pins out of the second metatarsal, scrape the holes in the bones to remove any damaged bone and to stimulate bone growth in the 4 holes, then bandage her all up. He did not sew closed the 4 holes, he wants them to drain and heal from the inside out. I got to see her about 45 minutes after the surgery and she looked great. Her cheeks were rosy and she was very lucid. They gave her only a little bit of morphine, which did not cause her to itch like she did after the first surgery.


Here she is dozing while we were waiting for her to be released. So peaceful!



Her pain has been easy to manage this time round and she isn't hindered by the crutches. She had been walking full time on her foot for the past 3 weeks, but now she is back to no weight on the foot for about a week. Then she will touch down for a week, half weight for another week, then a week on full weight with crutches. She is to return to see the doc after 4 weeks to see how the holes are filling in. Hopefully the bone will be healed enough that she can be off the crutches again.

Her foot is swollen, but looks much better than we thought. You can see from this picture, that P doesn't look at her foot as "scarred for life" but as a "fresh start to the rest of it".