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!