Four months down and not out

Today was a liberation day, of sorts. Any time you are counting off days or months since a major sugery, it's cause for celebration. No matter what the progress is. That's what I've learned from this process anyway.

For me, today was the "four month anniversary" of my triple osteotomy or the right foot to correct a severe deformity caused by years of joint damage from my form of arthritisis. the deformity was causing the foot to roll out wildly to the right, almost to the point of snapping the ankle. My initial hope, and naive one I found out, was to simply - simply! - have the ankle replaced over two years ago. the ankle, at that time, was 90 percent trashed and left to the last remaining form of treatement. Replacement or fusion.

However, the foot, again with its deformity caused in part by the ankle's weakness, meant that no doctor in North America would attempt a replacement without first correcting the deformity. To not do it this way was described like this: having your tires replaced while leaving your car axles broken.

In 2008, I had the foot fused. But it failed as they often do. The next options were presented to me like this: have it totally fused and walk like Frankenstein, get the foot amputated or have this invasive procedure called an osteotomy. This would require "undoing" the first fusion, pulling out all five screws, cutting and pasting together the foot and then holding it together with eight new screws and a plate. They don't call it foot reconstruction for nothing, dude.

In the end, the hope is I could walk correctly, fit in a shoe better, but leaving the ankle, which is now an 11 on a scale of 1 to 10 on the trashed meter, still in pain. Down the road we will tackle that mess. Now looking at four months removed from the second surgery, I feel that God is bringing me out. It's been a long road, but it's been one of healing and it has brought me through many needed scriptures of healing. There is no healing without first having pain.

God has been faithful. It hasn't been perfect, I mean you are dealing with doctors so it never is, but from my perspective, everything is going well. Despite setbacks, like the wound that was left open for three months (but did not get infected), the foot is healing. You ca see in the above photos, the wound is healed and I am still in the walking cast. Soon, I will be allowd to go to physical therapy which I am excited about. I've lost muscle strength in the legs but that is receoverable.

Sometimes it takes longer than we think. But God heals! Don't just trust me. Here is proof.