Three month check-up

Posted in: Injury Time

This morning I went to visit Mr Klinke, my foot surgeon, at Guy's to have him check up on my heels healing. It's hard for me to summarise these meetings as in a sense nothing really happens, yet it does. He looked over my feet, twisted and turned them and generally seemed happy with their progress. We talked about how I have trouble walking and landing with my heels first due to the damaged heel pad - it feels like I'm walking on bone if I don't have my insoles in. Instead I tend to walk flat-footed. There's persisting nerve damage around the back right of my heel where the knife went in. No substantial impact besides occasional bizarre and entirely illusory neural reports of excess heat, or being cut at.

He made a comment that the long-term effects of bone/joint damage are worse than strokes or heart attacks. While strokes & heart attacks have an acute effect, and sometimes leave damage (e.g. partial facial paralysis) their perceived effect tends to fade and be assimilated into one's background senses. Whereas, say, my calcaneal fracture damage, it's constantly there, constantly reminding, every footfall, every time I wake up, every time I stand to go for a piss, every time I play footsie under a table. Eh.

Klinke said I need to avoid impact sports or long duration work on the joint, such as hiking or distance walking. I don't feel any particular loss about those as I never really enjoyed hiking and have spent considerable energy in pursuit of avoiding walking (for me, an inherently time-consuming and dull activity).

It's weird to think though that a decision about getting into a house one early morning has now effectively prevented me from finishing learning front and back flips, an incredibly fun move I almost could do without support in gymnastics the month of my accident. I'm just not going to be able to do them. End of story. Better luck after the reincarnation. Perhaps I'll come back as a dolphin and end up performing in a zoo to make up for it. That would probably be quite fun.

So I'm back in hospital on June 14 2006 which will be 13 months after the accident, and the time at which the recovery will have essentially be finished. At that point further surgery could be possible to trim down the jagged bone in my heal. Here's hoping it sorts itself out on its own...

Posted by Paul Makepeace at December 7, 2005 13:36 | TrackBack