It's been 3 days now since my surgery and my recovery has been going well. I haven't experienced any side effects from the surgery or the medication I've been taking. No drowsiness, nauseousness, stomach pains or anything. I only watched out my diet on the day of the surgery, just to be on the safe side and not because I felt that I'd get nauseous from eating something. The day after the surgery I was already back to my regular diet.
The pain has been rather mild although I should probably attribute that to the pain killers, which seem to do a good job at masking the pain. I had been taking pain killers every time I started to feel some pain, which would happen every 4-6 hours. I was also using a cryotherapy unit, which is a cooler-like box with a motor that pumps ice cold water to my foot to reduce the pain and swelling. Basically instead of icing my foot I had this unit attached the whole day (I only plugged it off when I went to bed at night), constantly cooling my foot. I stopped using the unit last night and today I only took a pain killer in the morning and I'm still pain free 9-10 hours later.
Everything I mentioned so far makes it seem like the surgery hasn't affected me much but it goes without saying that my mobility has taken a big hit. I need to be walking around with crutches for 2-3 weeks without putting any weight on my left foot. For the first 3 days my foot was just wrapped around with bandages and a splint on the back of my leg but today I had that replaced with a cast. Even with the cast, though, I can't put any weight and I'll rely on the crutches until I can switch the cast to a walking boot. Even the simplest tasks become challenging when you have to balance on one foot and can't walk and carry anything in your hands at the same time. One of the toughest situations is waking up in the middle of the night, needing to use the bathroom, and having to find my way there while half asleep. At least I've gotten the hang of it by now and I can walk around rather comfortably whenever I'm fully conscious. I still spend most of my day lying in bed or on the couch, which doesn't take long to get boring. I watched as much TV as I could take this past weekend but I'll be back at work this week (still at home but working nonetheless) so I'll have things to keep me busy. I'll be able to start driving on Wednesday so I'll even be able to get out of the house a little bit.
All things considered I'm happy with how things are progressing. I still have a long way to go before I'm fully recovered but the worst part is over with.
