I was doing very well following my foot surgery.  For the first three days, it was elevation and ice–20 minutes on/20 minutes off with the ice.  Ted was awesome about getting up and down to fetch ice while I sat in the elevated foot position.  The doctor said I’d need pain-killers for three days, and he was right.  I guess he has some prior knowledge about this situation.  I’m not supposed to remove my bandages until I have the stitches removed, so I haven’t seen my toes, but I know there are stitches on the top of each one and an actual metal pin with a protective rubber tip sticking out of the end of each corrected toe.

After feeling pretty good Sunday, I woke up around 4:00 am Monday with pain in one toe that wouldn’t let me sleep and didn’t respond to medication.  I called the doctor and was told I might have bumped it in my sleep–no biggie.  Today, it was still hurting, so I called the doctor again and was told to come to the office.  I said it felt like the metal pin was pressing into my toe, but the other two toes didn’t feel like that.  An x-ray showed that one pin had made a one-quarter turn in its place and was jammed down a quarter inch so that it was pressing into the next bone beyond the joint!  No wonder it felt like a metal pin in my foot!  

The doctor pulled the pin back out to where it should be and it feels fine.  I don’t remember bumping my foot (I’ve been really careful, because it’s still very tender), but he said it doesn’t take much and that I’ll likely do it several more times before the pins are removed in a month.  The good news:  if it happens when my toes are more healed, it probably won’t hurt.  Now I have to worry about another bump, but if it’s such a common occurrence, it won’t be a surprise to the doctor if I need another adjustment.  It might be time to come up with a better idea than easily-jammed pins in the toes.

Today was my first day out of the house since the surgery.  It was weird to get one sock out of the drawer and to take one shoe from the closet instead of two.  Maybe after doing this for a month, it will seem normal.