In a way I was fortunate because I had plenty of heads up about my surgery to repair my tendon and fix my flat feet. We had a family beach vacation planned the week after my appointment with the foot doctor, and I refused to cancel it because we had to cancel our vacation last year due to COVID-19. I wasn't going to do that to our kids. My doctor had his vacation scheduled directly following ours. So we landed on the date of Wednesday, July 14 for my surgery.
Dr. P. could clearly sense that I was panicking about the recovery timeline of the surgery, so he left me time to gather myself and visited another patient. I texted my husband, whose immediate response was "You have to get it done. Better sooner rather than later. I don't want you to be in pain." I pointed out that he is going to be carrying a heavy load with caring for me, and driving once school starts - we just signed our son up for fall soccer, so that will be a lot of chauffeuring for him. He said we will make it through, and we will- it just caused me a lot of panic at first.
I had a pretty traumatic experience when our daughter was born- she was delivered via emergency C-section after I was diagnosed with severe pre-eclampsia, and I have been going to therapy the past two years to help deal with the anxiety and medical PTSD I developed after that event. In order to handle my anxiety about this upcoming foot surgery and recovery, I dove headfirst into finding out every possible thing I could. I found the following blogs and blog entries extremely helpful while doing my research:
- https://flatfootsurgery.blog/
- https://www.themomcafe.com/20-truths-about-life-after-foot-and-ankle-surgery/
- https://www.healthboards.com/boards/foot-ankle-problems/737812-tactics-coping-while-non-weight-bearing-after-foot-surgery.html
- I also saved specific articles to a Pinterest board, here: https://pin.it/5hEx3GH
Another helpful thing was reading post-op recovery documents from various foot and ankle doctors and services that I came across on the web. My own doctor gave me a very interesting lecture - complete with illustrations - on the anatomy of my foot. I made dozens of lists and did whatever I could to overprepare my home and brain for this surgery.
One of the things that caused me extreme stress was that I will not be able to start the school year- our first student day is slated for 8/19, and the earliest day I'll be able to teach - strictly according to timeline, which will flex according to how well I recover - is 9/8. Luckily, I was able to get into both of my classrooms (I teach in two buildings) and set them up enough that a substitute can cover for me at the beginning of the year, and I can navigate around when I am able to return. I also took pictures all around my classroom, including with cupboard doors open, so that if anyone sent me a message asking where something was, I would be able to help them locate it. Once that was done I felt a lot better.
I also took pictures around the lower level of my house. We live in a split level, and I knew the stairs would be a challenge. So I took pictures of bookshelves downstairs, and the front panels of our washer and dryer - that way I could help with laundry from afar as well. : ) Also - lots of cleaning, trying to do as much fun stuff with the kids while I can, putting some freezer meals together for the crockpot, taking clothes for consignment, taking the dog to the vet and the kids to their well checks to get that all in. Cleared pathways in my home, secured a knee scooter, set up a "nest" in our recliner with my things within reach.
Then... surgery time finally arrived.
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