Ankle Surgery: An Update

First, let me start off by apologizing for my lack of blogging as of late. Going into surgery, I truly had no idea how difficult it was going to be for me to recover from all of this. I can't say the surgeon didn't warn me, but for some reason, because it hurt so much pre-surgery, I was convinced that it could only get better afterwards. Boy, was I wrong. Apparently, the right side of my ankle was so shattered that they had to do a bone graft. This, along with adding a plate and seven screws? And let's just say my recovery has been less than pleasant.

After doing an extensive amount of research and having multiple convos with the surgeon, I opted to have the nerve block as well as general anesthesia to manage the pain. Because of the amount of discomfort I had been in prior to surgery, the doc was afraid if I didn't have both of these (instead of just one or the other), I would be severely uncomfortable after surgery. In the end, I am so, so glad I took his advice because afterwards? I felt like I got run over by a truck times ten. Not only that, but there was a part of my ankle that the nerve block didn't block the pain from and holy shit did it hurt! I literally woke up from the anesthesia screaming, and did not stop screaming until they gave me a second block. It was that bad. I then spent the next 3 days/nights in the hospital where they slowly began to wean me off of my IV meds. Finally, on Saturday morning around noon, I was able to go home.

As I mentioned before, my stepmom flew out the night before my surgery, which has been such a blessing. She took care of the kids during my hospital stay, brought them up to visit me daily and has been a HUGE help since I've been home. I seriously don't know what I'd do without her. For the time being, I've been instructed to stay off my foot except to go to the bathroom, which would make taking care of the littles by myself (since Dan's returned to work) a near impossible task. So the plan is for her to stay until after my follow-up appointment on the 19th, at which time I may be getting a walking cast (crossing my fingers). If not, I should at least be able to crutch around and handle the day to day tasks with the kids on my own. Also, Nico will be done with school by then, which works out great, seeing as I can't drive to take him to and fro. Not having to stress about all of this has been really nice. Right now, my main focus is just to recover. And recover, I will. You know, as long as I can sit down and relax, which has proven to be quite the challenge, but more on this later.

Do any of you have any stories about broken bones and/or how you dealt with the recovery process? At times, I'm not sure if my tolerance for pain just really sucks, or if this something that's extremely unpleasant for everyone. I'd love to hear your stories! Primarily with the hope of discovering that I'm not just being a complete baby about all of this, lol.