At First...

I thought the splint was put on wrong. The girl who put it on didn't seem too assured in what she was doing, and she put these two very hard "things" right next to the bones of my foot and a ton of cotton padding. It hurt like hell. I had to take a two hour car trip to get home, and I just couldn't wait to get home and take it off, even though the ER doctors told me not to touch it, and don't take a shower.

I did take it off, but thought I'd better leave some of the padding on, and wrapped it with an ACE bandage. The next day I realized it wasn't the splint that was causing the pain - it just hurt. I put most of the splinting back on.

Since I was dirty because I was ready to do some painting before I fell, I HAD to take a shower! I decided to keep the splint on, and my husband wrapped my leg really well, we put a stool in the shower for me to sit on, and somehow I crawled over the rim of the tub. Nothing got wet. Now the second time I took a shower, about one week later before surgery, I poo-pooed to my husband that he was putting entirely too much duct tape on the garbage bag on my leg. What a dummy. A little water got inside. A wet splint is miserable. Fortunately I didn't have to endure it too long because I went into surgery. I subsequently sponge bathed, until I ordered a dry-cast wrap. It worked well, but since I never wanted to experience a wet cast again, even with the wrap on, I sat in the tub to take a shower with my leg draped outside the tub!

After my first visit with the surgeon, I was determined to get the swelling down. I seriously made sure my leg was above my heart. I waited to get up to go to the bathroom. Before I propped my leg up, I made sure I had everything within reach. I'm a private practice doctor of chiropractic, so I had to go to the office at least a few times that week, but my husband drove, and when I was in the car, my leg was still propped up for the ride. When I got to the office, I mostly let my staff do therapy, while I charted with my let propped up on the desk, above my heart.

The pain was bad, but it seemed like it was easing somewhat during that week. I remember during the second visit to the surgeon, I hadn't taken Vicodin that morning, and asked him if I should continue to be stoic and only take it when I couldn't stand the pain anymore, but he told me for crying out loud, you broke a bone - take it when you need it!

The assistant in the cast room took the splint off. My foot was all purple and looked swollen to me, but not near as bad as the week before. I didn't know if it was good enough. The doctor came in and immediately remarked on how much better it was, and we were ready to go! Of course, scheduling for surgery is not immediate. There are CAT scans to obtain, surgery suites to be available, pre-op screening/testing, etc.

All requirements were met, the date was set, I was good to go.