A Tale of Bill's Ankle - Act I
In January, Bill’s foot started hurting. It just happened to be after a walk so we assumed he had injured it somehow, but he hadn’t remembered doing anything injury-worthy. He contacted his PCP who ordered an x-ray and upon finding that it was not broken, ordered an MRI. The MRI showed a tear in a tendon in his ankle so he was sent to an orthopedic foot surgeon. The visit with the surgeon was brief, but it was decided that surgery would be necessary. The cause was simply wear and tear (don’t pardon the pun) and Bill’s high arches. It was also decided that another procedure to his first metatarsal would be advantageous to keep the stress off of the new tendon. The surgeon said Bill would be on crutches for two and a half weeks.
On March 4th, Bill had the peroneus brevis tendon replaced in his ankle. It was an allograft procedure, meaning the replacement tendon was from a cadaver (or I guess specifically from another human being, but in this case a cadaver because I expect that most living people would want to hang onto their peroneus brevis tendon unless they no longer wanted to walk, but hey, to each his own). The surgery was early and since I wake up earlier than early, I had time to curl my hair and put on makeup and the Tory Burch tracksuit I had purchased for just this occasion. You see, the surgery made me anxious and my solution to my anxiety was to pretend I was someone else. In this case, I was a Charlie’s Angel who doesn’t take any shit from anyone and who would not be afraid of her husband having surgery because she is wearing a superpower tracksuit and looks fabulous doing it.
The rain that morning was unreal. I could hardly see at all through the window. We joked that we might both require orthopedic surgery since we couldn’t see any cars in front of us and we might end up in a horrible accident. I know, sometimes our jokes aren’t very funny.
The surgical center was small with an uncomfortable waiting room. They called Bill back and I got to sit with him for a little while before the surgery. My parents arrived to keep me company and all of us got to see the surgeon for a moment so he could reassure us this would be a very simple procedure that would be over in no time. My parents and I were ushered back into the uncomfortable (so very, very uncomfortable) waiting room and we waited. For what seemed like forever. Or two hours (hey, I’m part of the “short attention span” generation…I think…what was I talking about again?). The surgeon came out and told me that the surgery was a success and that the original tendon had been completely shredded. He had found a bone spur in there, as well, so he filed it down.
A few hours later (or 30 minutes later), I was brought back to the recovery area. There were maybe a dozen beds separated by those curtains on rails. Bill was goofy, but lucid (I know, when is he not goofy, but lucid?). The wrap on his leg was ginormous. The nurse brought in a bunch of papers to sign, which I did not read. I could have been signing over our first-born (since we don’t have a first born, I didn’t really care). I guess I was promising to make sure Bill didn’t try and drive or sign any contracts for at least the next 24 hours because of the effects of the anesthesia. Honestly, how many people are just running around with contracts for people to sign right after they’ve had surgery? I pretended to listen to all of the instructions and then I went to get the car. The nurse wheeled Bill out to the pick up area and I was very impressed with his ability to maneuver Bill (aka human scaffolding) into the car.
I know there are people who get to a certain age and understand that they should probably purchase a one story house as at some point, they will find the stairs difficult, if not impossible, to use. We are not those people. We have one very tall staircase. It’s absolutely beautiful, but when you have just come out of general anesthesia and are on pain medications, aesthetics are hardly the first thing you really care about. I had seen commercials for those “elegant” chair lifts, but if you think I’m going to have one of those things in our house, you have lost your damn mind. So the only practical solution was of course for Bill to go up the stairs backwards on his ass. He was able to do it and then he went straight to bed.
Prior to the surgery, Bill decided that he could do crutches for two and a half weeks. It was only two and a half weeks right? He lasted one day. Yes, one day. Crutches are essentially a torture device and they really don’t work well for a man who is 6’4”. We got on the phone and found a medical supply store where we could rent a knee scooter. I went and picked it up and I was fascinated by this store. They had a pink walker with a leopard print seat! And electronic barcaloungers that moved you from a seated to a standing position! They also had a wall full of accessories that people might need for recovering from surgery. I had to buy something right? I got what basically amounted to a cast condom to wear in the shower that keeps your cast from getting wet. Smart right? Bill was horrified and stuck it in the cabinet. I brought home the scooter and it was so much better than crutches. My only complaint was that Bill would squeal “wheeeee” every single time he rode on it. After a day of using the scooter, we decided it would be necessary to have one upstairs as well as downstairs. We called the place we had called before and they were out so we called a few other places and finally found a place up north. We drove up there to get it and this was not like the store I had been to earlier. And the salesperson was not like the salesperson I had worked with earlier. And this scooter was not in the same condition as the one we had brought home the day before. I will just say there are varying degrees of quality in medical supply stores.
Bill couldn’t take baths or showers for a few days after the surgery (insert all of your jokes about how I could give him sponge baths here). I had the ingenious idea of buying face cleaning cloths and baby wipes. I was looking around for something like baby wipes, but for adults because I personally can’t stand the smell of baby powder, etc. so I figured there must be something for people in Bill’s situation. Well, right there next to the toilet paper section I found it. A whole selection of wipe products! They were in all sorts of pastel colors with floral scents. And then I saw it. The best thing ever. They actually have a product called Dude Wipes. Dude Wipes! Sleek black packaging and unscented. They were perfect. I mean of course a man would not want to use lavender scented wipes right? Bill was not as excited about my purchase as I was so they went in the cabinet with the cast condom. He did thank me later. They are genius I tell you!
Anyone who knows Bill, knows he is of the independent variety of human being who does not like to just sit in bed all day and watch soaps (Does anyone actually like that? Do they even have soaps anymore?). In only a few days, I came home to find him cooking dinner at the stove. He worked as often as he could. He played fetch with Grace off of the deck. We went to the grocery store a few times, but I had to stop taking him when he wouldn’t stop racing down the aisles squealing “wheeee!” He couldn’t drive, but he was pretty mobile and self-sufficient. Not that it was always easy, but he could have been a big baby and he was not.
On March 23rd, we went to the surgeon’s office and Bill got the wrap and stitches removed and a walking cast put on. I got to pick the color. Light blue. Everything was going according to plan. Until March 24th. That was the day Austin went on lockdown because of the coronavirus. Thankfully, we had been pretty stocked up so we weren’t among the masses of people buying toilet paper and hand sanitizer at the grocery store. I was able to return the scooters to the medical supply stores and after that, we pretty much just stayed home like everyone else.
Bill broke the first cast while trying to get the stump of an old century plant out of the ground. Like I said, he’s not one to just sit around. When he showed me the broken cast, I was a little perturbed as I had plans. I was gardening damnit! Instead we went back to the doctor’s office to get a new cast. Frankly, I had been afraid to leave the house since the start of the lockdown so I wasn't excited about going to the doctor’s office. It was fine though. There were hardly any people there at all. I was less perturbed (OK let’s call it what it was, I was pretty ticked/pissed/irritable) when we were told that the first cast was not put on well at all. The second cast was a force of nature. It could easily take someone out. I mean if he had the need to do that.
The walking cast gave Bill more freedom and made for a happier man (and wife). He could finally take a shower (with the cast condom, which was extremely handy btw). While easier to use than crutches, the scooters were becoming tiresome and even though they had a little basket on the front, they were not as useful as those giant banana seat bicycle baskets with the daisies on the front. You could have fit a whole frozen turkey in one of those things. Not that I had Bill hauling around frozen turkeys, but what if I had needed him to? I would have been SOL.
As the coronavirus has completely eradicated my ability to remember which day it is and all of the days have been running together, I really don’t know what else to report about Bill’s recovery. It took a while and was frustrating at times, but Bill had a pretty good attitude about it and it felt like perfect timing. It’s kind of like when you are sick and the weather is perfect outside and you imagine that every person on the planet is outside having the best time and they are all forgetting you, but right now, everyone on the planet is stuck inside and so we really aren’t missing a thing. I guess that’s super selfish to actually write down. I should wish that everyone in the world were outside playing on a sunny 70 degree day. Yep, I should.
Bill got the walking cast off and started physical therapy in April. He was getting gold stars all over the place. No one can keep this man down I tell you. He didn’t go overboard at all, but he was progressing really well and walking better and better every day.
And then it happened. One day he came home from PT early. Now Bill always says “Hello!” really loudly when he walks in the door. There was no hello. “Hello?” I said. There was a very quiet and frustrated “hello” that came from downstairs. I knew something was very wrong. I ran downstairs and Bill explained that the PT person told him to call his doctor because he had lost all lateral strength in his ankle. Bill was not happy. He had also been experiencing some pain, but had thought it was part of the healing process. This was not going according to plan. Bill called the doctor’s office and made an appointment.
I was not able to go with him to the appointment, but he summed it up with the doctor’s dreaded words, “well, that’s not good.” I don’t think that’s what you want to hear from your doctor. An MRI was ordered and we waited.
The Thursday after the MRI, we both went to meet with the surgeon. We waited about 45 minutes when he finally came in and said he’d just had a very long conversation with the radiologist. We were not surprised, but the news was devastating nonetheless. Bill’s tendon replacement had failed. He would have to do the entire thing over again. There was no reason or explanation. It just happens sometimes the surgeon told us. I have to say that this was a very good time for everyone in the room to have to be wearing a mask. I think seeing expressions at this point would have been troublesome. If I had seen Bill’s fallen face, I might have started crying and then we both might have caused a huge scene. Masks seem to keep the emotion of a situation at a lower level. Not that my emotions were completely under wraps (as evidenced by the many, many upset text messages I sent to certain individuals).
The surgery revision (such a nice word for “fixing a fuck up”) was scheduled for July 17th. It was a quiet drive home and a quiet evening in general. Bill talked to our friend about a second opinion. A second opinion is a very good thing. Especially if things didn’t go so well the first time. It can also be intimidating. I mean what if the other doctor says something completely different and you don’t know who is correct? Thankfully, Bill decided to at least just talk to a new doctor.
You know when you go to a new doctor and you have a problem that has not received proper attention or even a diagnosis and you have all of this hope that this doctor will have the answer and then you leave the appointment completely disappointed? I hope you do not, but it sucks. And I was afraid of that for Bill. I wasn’t allowed in the new doctor’s office because of the virus, but I was able to listen in on the phone. Again, it was a 45 minute wait. I think foot doctors are just really busy or extraordinarily bad at time management. No matter. The new doctor was a big ass ray of sunshine in a really shitty situation. He explained everything so thoroughly and answered every question. The first surgery had not been particularly wrong, but it may have been incomplete. He told us that when sterilizing a cadaver tendon, those methods can cause the tendon to weaken so it needs to be pulled very tightly when it is attached. Also, depending on the architecture of the foot, if the alignment is not addressed, too much stress will be put on the tendon and it could tear. Bingo! That’s exactly what had happened to Bill. The doctor told us his plan would be to again replace the tendon and then to perform two procedures, which would align the foot and take the stress off of the tendon. The recovery would be longer. Six weeks on the scooter and then a walking cast and then PT. If it was the right way, we were in. Bill’s surgery with the new doctor was scheduled for July 14th.
So now we are four days out from surgery number two. We bought two scooters, one for upstairs and one for downstairs. We bought a small fridge for upstairs. We bought a single leg elevation pillow (last time we tried tying a bunch of pillows together and it was a mess). After this, we plan to operate our own medical supply store. I think we will have enough stuff. We’ve stocked up on Diet Coke and TV dinners. I think we are prepared. Physically prepared anyway.
Bill and I have certainly faced health challenges in our marriage and they’ve all worked out perfectly in the end. This was our first setback and we weren’t exactly emotionally prepared for it. We’re approaching this surgery with a hopeful yet realistic expectation that life isn’t always perfect and this might be a hard recovery. But we are also approaching it with love for each other and love from our family and friends. We’ve done it before and we can do it again.
Stay tuned for part 2!
