First Week in the Boot

I survived my first week in a the boot. I posted on Wednesday that the drugs weren't messing with me too much - I actually felt super focused 2 afternoons that I was sitting to do some computer work. And I slept fine on those meds too. I took my last of the 19 pills in the pack on Friday. So now I'm "drug free." Yay me.

The biggest issue came after a big day on my feet Thursday evening. Thursday morning, I was a science fair judge at my boys' school:

Pic from the school's FB page. There's me in the background (left)
in my boot judging my 4th project (about how reaction time varies by sex).


Dr. Wang and a student with me making final notes in the background. Sitting when I could.

Then Thursday night was a big open house at my boys' school where I basically stood and walked around for 90 minutes. At the end of that, I had a sharp pain that came on QUICK right underneath the middle of the 3 straps on my boot - the part that holds the ankle back in the boot. It was fine when I sat. But walking HURT BAD. I angered something in my leg under that strap. I was hoping it would be fine the next day, but it wasn't. I kept experimenting with padding and strap tightness. I ended up settling on having 2 small hand towels and 1 washcloth crammed in there - providing an extra 7-8 layers of padding (depending on how I folded the biggest hand towel). So I spent the rest of the day looking like this:

This set-up has 8 layers of cloth between the boot and my jeans.


I had to hobble with Ella to a final vet appointment. Here she is "hiding" in the
vet's office. Luckily, she never ran off in a way where I had to chase after her.

By Saturday, it wasn't totally better, but it was getting there. And I didn't need to be on my feet much that day, so that helped. I still wore all the padding the same way on Sunday, and it seemed a lot better. It's TBD if I'll wear all that padding again today.

Here's my boot-wearing week-in-review:

Upper body M/W/F/Sun, with core and PT leg exercises Tu/Thur/Sat.

(Everything was done in the boot. The leg exercises were all non-weight bearing things like "clams" and "scissors.")

The injury is still feeling better! Laying in bed some evenings or mornings, I feel the pain in the same old spot, but it's more minor. And throughout the day, it feels MUCH better than normal - basically no issue at all! I had the boot off only ONCE during one of these days, and that was while I sat at a computer for 2 hours - I never stood up without the boot. Six out of the last 7 days, it's gone on after a few steps over to it in the morning, and came off while in the bathroom getting ready for bed (pre-shower). One day (Sat night to Sunday morning) I took it off downstairs, climbed the stairs without it, and in the morning had to walk back down the stairs to get it on. And (maybe not surprisingly), I felt some pain in that spot in bed Sunday morning. So it *IS* feeling better, but I still sure feel that painful spot at times. But now it's more like a faint feeling 5% of the time instead of a pretty annoying pain 99% of the time.

p.s. If you missed it, I posted my first set of my cute wife in a bikini Mexico vacation photos over the weekend, and I'll be posting a few more pics later this week.