Bunion 101

Starting in about July of 2012, my left foot started hurting a lot. It wasn't only just when I was running, it'd start aching randomly when I was walking or sleeping or driving or sitting. I went months without doing anything, hoping it'd go away. Once I realized that it wasn't going away, I consulted google and came to the conclusion that I had a bunion.

At first I was like, a bunion?!, isn't that what old people get? Aren't they like nasty warts or corns? To my surprise, bunions are actually structural issues with your foot, causing your bones to shift and push your big toe into your second toe and form a lovely bone spur. And while the thought of that is still gross, I was happy to find out that it was just the way I was born. Bunions can be hereditary or they can be because you were too tight of shoes throughout your life. With my wide feet I'm definitely not a styling, thin, high heel shoe kind of gal. I got my nasty bunions from my genes. I found out that my Mom had them and her Mom had them too. Both of them had surgery to fix their bunions as well, around my age too (mid to late 30's).

I made an appt with a local podiatrist, who confirmed I indeed had a bunion. Another surprise to me is that I had bunions on both feet, but only my left foot was causing me pain. I had two options, manage the pain or get surgery to correct the structural issue and be relieved of the pain. I am not a huge fan of surgery (who is?) so I did research on ways I could manage my pain. After all it wasn't the worst pain ever, it was like that annoying back pain that just doesn't go away. It's there, it hurts, you can still function, but it hurts. I decided on surgery. Here is my first set of xrays to show the angle of both of my big toes was not normal.

And you could have just looked at my feet to see that something was rotten in Denmark.

After surgery this lovely boot was going to be on me for six to eight weeks. 

So, Friday January 11th, I had the surgery, called a Bunionectomy. Which I don't really get, because it's not like you are removing the bunion, you are fixing it. I always think of 'ectomy' as removal of something. They do remove the bone spur that forms, but I still think it kind of perpetuates the misconception that bunions are nasty warts that old people remove.

Here are a few pictures of the first few days after the surgery. I had lots of snuggle time with the kids and the cats.

This is what I had to wear the first two weeks in the shower so that I still had the boot on and didn't get any of it wet. And that I didn't accidently drop the soap on my recovering foot in the shower and cause damage to my healing foot.

After five days I went back into the podiatrist to see how the healing was going. Wow! I was black and blue. Funny though that they didn't touch any of my bruised parts during surgery. The foot gets bruised because during surgery they have a band around my ankle to cut off the blood flow to my foot to reduce the amount of blood during the surgery. When they remove the band, all the blood rushes back to my toes and that is what causes the bruising. Fascinating.

Here is Day 7.

 More cat loving.

Cecilita is actually sleeping in this upside down position. Funny how entertaining the animals become after being confined to the couch and on a good amount of pain pills.

More zombie foot shots at 2 1/2 weeks.

The kids were definitely a source of entertainment. A big thanks again to Brandon for taking care of them while I was so confined. I couldn't have done this without him. 

Below you can see the wire they put around that bone to hold it more in place. If the pictures of my feet don't visually show you what was going on, you can kind of tell in the xrays. 

At week 6 we happened to just have our yearly trip to the amazing beach house in Brookings, Oregon. I came up with genius idea to cover my boot in a plastic garbage bag and I was able to slightly join in on the beach fun.

I even hiked a redwood trail that weekend in Brookings. It was a great hike and suffering through it was worth it. So gorgeous.

Back to my foot. It looks ok today, the scar is still healing.

So far the surgery definitely has been worth it. A short four months after the surgery I am already back up to running three miles. It was surprisingly really tough to get back into the groove of running. It was frustrating that I basically had to retrain my body all over, rebuilding the stamina to breath when running for 30ish minutes.

Hard work does pay off! 

Fingers and toes crossed that the bunion on my right foot stays at it is and doesn't ever start causing me pain. Especially now that I have orthotics for my shoes. Man, I'm old! 

Fort Stevens Yurt Adventure

Last year we went for a day trip to Fort Stevens to meet up with Erin and Payton who were staying there for the week. We had so much fun in that one day we decided that this year, we'd join for an extended stay. We booked our yurt to join them for four days, Thurs-Sun. We had so much fun in these four days this year, we are definitely extending it even longer next year.

Fort Stevens is about 2 1/2 hours from us, on the Oregon coast and Oregon/Washington border. For the history buffs reading this, Fort Stevens was once a military base built in the 1860's and active until the 1940's. It was even fired on by Japanese submarines in 1942. Lots of history around this place and so much to offer. It is part of the National Registry of Historic Places and this is what it offers now.

Our first day was us getting settled in and setting up "camp" in our yurt next to Erin and Payton's. Yurts are basically a stationary tent with electricity. Pretty cool.

We headed to the beach after settling in so Hunter Marie could get her sand fix on. She could spend all day jumping and rolling down the sand dunes. She is completely in love with sand, it's kind of ridiculous, but she has so much fun, we all deal with the sand in the butt afterwards. I didn't get any good shots of her on that outing  I was too busy taking care of Leo who was not digging the beach at all. It wasn't until Grandpa gave him his hoodie that he ventured out on the sand. And when he did, we all could not stop laughing, he was like yoda crossing the desert.

You can kinda see Hunter in the background of this picture already near the top of the dunes with Brandon.

On this beach is the Wreck of Peter Iredale, a ship that wrecked in 1906 and you can still see what remains of it today. This is a fun shot of the wreck, looking over a sand dune. You can still see the full shape of the ship with the tide being out.

After the beach adventure we HAD to take some camp showers to get the sand out of certain places. Then it was campfire time! Aunt Erin taught Hunter how to make her first S'mores.

She ended up being a little put off by the "golden" cooked marshmallow and went for an uncooked marshmallow between two graham crackers... it was a start.

All the adults discovered how incredibly delicious a S'mores is with a Reese's Peanut Butter cup instead of Nestle's chocolate bar. I will never have them without a Reese's, simply AMAZING!

After the kids were in bed we enjoyed time around the fire. The local wildlife even wanted to join us. If you look closely in this blurry shot, you can see a deer in the background! We had a lot of fun shooing off the raccoons and squirrels who felt entitled to our stuff.

On Friday we played around the yurt site before we set out for a day in Astoria to ride the choo-choo.

The choo choo in Astoria is celebrating it's 100th anniversary. It's actually a trolley car that only started running in Astoria in 1999, but the car itself is 100 years old. Either way, it offered a really fun view of Astoria and the waterfront. Leo was so excited waiting for the train even with the crazy winds.

And while on the train/trolley, he was completely fascinated by it and the view!

Unfortunately Hunter was bored within minutes, daydreaming of rolling around in the sand some more.

She had her fun the next day at the beach, but not until after the adults had a fun morning of kayaking! It was the parks first weekend of kayaking for the season so they were offering a free session so we signed up for that. Bright and early at 8am, Me, Brandon, Erin and Payton biked over to Coffenbury Lake while Grandpa stayed to hang out with the kids. Grandpa kayaks often so he was kind enough to sit this out for us to go. It was my first time and I fell in love with it. It was a cold start but turned into a gorgeous morning.

Coffenbury Lake

Then it was off to check out Fort Stevens for a little bit and then head to the beach on our way back. We jumped on our bikes and enjoyed the sunshine.

The Fort is amazing, lots of history and the area is beautiful. We took a ride in a 1950's army truck to get a good look at the whole place. Below are just a few of the pictures of the place. 

The Plotting Room

The Rifle Range

Searchlight Generator building

View of the bay

One teeny section of the fort

It was an awesome four day weekend trip that ended too soon. I can't wait to do it all again next year! This time we'll be inviting some more family to join us, we'll take over the yurt village!