Here we go, again! It seems that I am becoming the "Queen of Ridiculous Injuries". My surgically repaired shoulder is finally getting close to performing normal activities after reattaching torn tendons (caused by pushing a chair) in August. That's the good news. The bad news is that I seem to have broken a bone in my right foot after doing something crazy like sleeping all night.
I woke up yesterday morning with a fairly sore foot. At first, I attributed it to my neuropathy acting up. As the morning went on it got worse and worse. By afternoon I could barely walk. The pain was excruciating with every step I took. It was approaching the number 8 range on the hospital pain scale of 1 - 10 with 10 being the worst pain in the world. I never went higher than 7 in my previous surgeries. My son and I have discussed this surmising that a 10 would be someone cutting off your leg with a dull knife. Not that bad but this was serious pain yesterday.
This morning it was just as bad with every step causing agony. And there was a fair amount of swelling across my toes and forefoot. The decision was made that Lou would drive me to Urgent Care. Fortunately, it wasn't crowded and I was called in after 5 minutes. From there it bogged down taking 45 minutes to see the doctor. He thought I had a metatarsal sprain but ordered an X-ray to be sure nothing was broken. I was to take ibuprofen, ice it, stay off it and use a cane when I did walk for the next week to 10 days.
A few hours later I received an email that my X-ray results were online. Yep, you guessed it, the first line read, "Comminuted, mildly displaced second metatarsal fracture." I learned a new word today, 'comminuted' means more than one fracture. Well, shit. It also showed several old injuries I wasn't aware of that I won't go into here as well as "mild degenerative changes".
I wracked my brain as to how I could have broken my foot by just going to bed and think I came up with a possibility after discussing it with my best friend. It requires a convoluted explanation but here goes. I love taking hot baths in the evening and have a beautiful new bathtub in our new house. I couldn't push myself up with my right arm due to the shoulder surgery so I would turn sideways on to my knees and stand up using mostly my left arm.....until the past 3 days.
My right arm is now able to push pretty hard so I discovered I could push up with both arms getting my feet underneath me and stand up quite easily. BUT most of my body weight was on my bent toes as I stood. We surmised that due to the neuropathy any pain felt minimal but the stress just might have snapped my 72 year old bones. I told you it was kind of convoluted and I do think the term "Queen of Ridiculous Injuries" applies. And I can't think of anything else that could have caused this.
I have been referred to an orthopedic doctor that I will contact early next week. It just seems like such a stupid occurrence that makes no sense. I've decided to give up trying to make sense of it all and go with the decision that "shit happens". And at least I know that I'm not a wimp who can't deal with pain since I was walking around with a broken bone in my foot. I'll keep you posted.
No comments:
Post a Comment