Old Person Crabby

I had an expectation, while waiting for my foot to heal, that once the walking boot could come off it would be smooth sailing.

This couldn't be further from the truth. 

My foot hurts worse now, especially at night, than it did the last month in the walking boot. My ortho advised that if the pain began to build I should probably switch back into the boot. Both my husband and my dad have suggested recently that I should slip it back on for a while. 

That feels like defeat. Like failure. Says the voice in my head, not the tone from their words. 

Stubborn? Me? Why do you ask?

While my ortho guy is top of the line, with explicit directions on taking care of everything step by step post surgery, there wasn't a lot of chatter on what to expect during healing. And with the exception of if it hurts a lot put the boot on followed by if the pain goes nuts come back in, there wasn't a discussion on what to expect now that the bones knitted back together. If you've spent much time with illness or injury in your life, as I have, this is pretty common. Repair and the mechanics behind it is the focus, moving forward is usually up to the patient. 

So I turned to the internet. I skipped symptom checkers so I'm not currently worried about my foot having frost bite or gangrene or some bizarre parasite. Turns out lots of folks who have had my kind of break and repair have the same questions. What's normal? How long does this go on? Should it really feel like that? 

In short, the bone repair is only the start of healing. And I was damn lucky in that area because my bone healed super, duper fast. The rest of it can take more than a year. Seriously?! It's one little bone in one small area of my body. I'm here to tell you: the stitches are out and the incision has long healed but the skin and musculature at the site is still so tender I don't let my husband rub his foot along mine when we're going to bed. The idea of my foot slipping and whacking into something makes me nauseated, even if I have a shoe on it. Let me repeat that for emphasis. Just the idea of my foot making contact with something makes me physically ill.

So if you're wondering how I'm feeling, in general or specific to my foot, I'm in pain. Several times a day my foot feels like I licked a light socket. 

And I'm crabby. Not the snapping at a well meaning comment from the hubby without warning kind of crabby. Bitchy crabby. That was earlier in the recovery phase. No, I'm in the worn out, don't have patience with the world at large and just want to take a nap crabby. Old person crabby. I want to prop my foot up and read a book until I fall asleep. Wake up, eat fresh bread, and snuggle with a dog. Repeat. 

But the world moves on. I'm back at full steam to regular life. I'm frustrated from the 3 month hiatus from 'normal' life that didn't result in being fully rested and bursting with energy. 

It's ridiculous to me how I feel. I know it's not a serious illness. I'm not recovering from catastrophic injuries. I'm crabby. I'm sore. I'm unfocused. I'm tired. My morale is in the toilet. Today. The past week. This too shall pass.