I'm one and a half weeks out from my second foot surgery , and, by all important measures, I'm doing well. But boy has the past week been difficult. In the first few days post-surgery I was in a pretty good mood; the surgery had gone well, I was in the excellent care of my mom, and I had made it past the last major hurdle of this months-long event. All I had to look forward to was recovery and progress and gradually returning to my normal life, whatever that might look like. But even though I've gone through this process once already, it's still just as difficult this time around. There's the constant worrying about this weird feeling or that new pain, the accidental step in the middle of the night when I forgot which foot was injured, and the agonizing wait time between appointments. Now it's compounded by concern over whether I'm taking good enough care of my first foot. Did I ruin the surgery when I stubbed my toe falling off an exercise ball? Am I usin...

This past week I took my first steps in a real shoe with my new foot. As with any first steps, I felt it worthy of recording: I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but my surprise, it felt perfectly fine—no pain. There were a few tears, though. I got rather emotional after so many weeks of anticipation, of protecting and worrying about my foot and wondering if I'd be able to use it again, even though I knew rationally that I would. It's very different to experience the act than to imagine it. Now it was real. Of course, I'd been walking in a boot for a few weeks, but it's just not the same. The boot intentionally keeps your foot from flexing and bending, so it's being cradled and coddled, which means you get used to walking without really using your foot. So in my first attempts at walking, I still wasn't really using my foot because that's what I'd gotten used to. Once I started walking around more, I realized I also wasn't stepping evenly ...

I'm now into my sixth week since surgery. I'm on track, making good progress, but I'm so close to time frame for recovery—six to eight weeks. My five-week follow-up last week went well, but I left feeling overwhelmed. The doctor said he didn't need to see me for another four weeks, which is just in time for my pre-op appointment for my second foot (!). To-Do List Since the appointment, I've no longer been using crutches (yay!), and I've been working to help my incision heal completely (I'll spare details), at which point I'll need to start treating it with a special scar gel to keep the tissue from hardening. Also during this interim, I'll need to be a bit more aggressive with my toe exercises to increase flexibility (i.e., make it hurt). And, when I feel comfortable enough, I can try gradually transitioning from the boot to an athletic shoe. Once I feel good in athletic shoes, I can resume driving. That feels like a lot of stuff to manage on my o...

At the end of week two, I'm home on my own and feeling pretty good. But it definitely feels like time has moved slowly. Hopefully the coming weeks will go by a little faster, now that I'm set up for a routine and able to do more for myself. First Follow-up I had my first follow-up appointment last week, which I'd been looking forward to pretty much since the day after surgery. Possibly because I was anticipating it so much, it felt like it would never come. But it did, and it went very well. I got my bulky dressing and "upper foot" cast off, and I finally saw my new foot! Of course, it wasn't beautiful; it was still tinted orange from the betadine used in surgery prep, it was swollen and a little bruised, and my incision was still healing and had strips of medical tape running along it (I'll save a barefoot photo for a later post). But my bunion was gone and my toe was aligned! That was the goal, and it was achieved. The doctor said it only looked lik...

Seminole Heights is kind of the "it" place in Tampa these days, and here is just one more reason to love it. Although the clinic I visited has been around for many years prior to the community's popularity, I only recently discovered it and decided to try it out. I've tried acupuncture several different times over the past decade or so, first to treat allergies , then to help alleviate a new and undiagnosed pain that set in several years ago. It's always been difficult to tell whether the acupuncture helped; it's not an immediate, magical solution to a given problem (although I did feel nearly immediate relief from head pain in a recent visit). For persistent or chronic problems, it takes repeated sessions, patience, and an open mind. But it also costs money (naturally), and the rate I was paying at the previous practitioners' offices was not sustainable, so I never continued the treatments for very long. I'd found out about Seminole Heights Co...

The past two weeks have been challenging for me. Two Fridays ago I had a tonsillectomy, which I did because I started developing tonsil stones over the past year or so, which coincided with this mysterious pain I'd been having. I got a couple of opinions from recommended ENTs, and they both said a tonsillectomy was the next logical step. While I wasn't eager to undergo a significant surgery--one that is particularly difficult on an adult--I needed to find the cause behind my pain so I could refocus on my life without being constantly sidetracked by the pain. The actual surgery went every well, and even my healing process was as good as it could have been. But it was a true two weeks before I felt close to normal again, and during the first week in particular, The first two days were actually easier than the rest of the first week; I had my mom with me, and other family came to visit the day after, and we even went out to eat at an Ethiopian restaurant , which serves (delicio...

This morning I ran four miles at about a 10:30 pace. It was not easy, and I did feel some residual pain (not from the calf injury , but from shin splints), but it's four miles I couldn't run a month ago. I'm grateful for that. I actually started back running several weeks ago, after a nine-week break, and I had about three successful four-to-five-mile runs, and then on my next run I felt pain in my left leg and thought it was my calf injury letting me know it was still there. I was pretty disappointed about that, but then when I was telling a friend about the pain, and how it was a little different than what I'd experienced before, he said it sounded like shin splints. Now, I'm no stranger to shin splints, as I'd trained through them for the Chicago Marathon, but it simply hadn't occurred to me that I was feeling something new; my mind just went straight the injury. And because the soleus muscle (which I'd injured) is really close to the tendon where ...

I don't pretend to know much about Reiki . What I knew before going into this session was that it was a form of energy healing of Eastern origin, based on the body's chakra system . Throughout my injury, I've done every kind of hands-on treatment I could think of or read about, but it occurred to me that there was another source of healing I hadn't tapped into: energy medicine. Actually, my aunt Pattie is the person who suggested Reiki early on in my injury when I posted about it on Facebook. Only later did it occur to me that I had a friend who was a Reiki master and practitioner. So I asked her if she'd be able to give me a session. She happily obliged, and we set a date. I had my session a couple of hours ago, and this is what my experience was like: First, it was a casual meeting, as Melissa and I had known each other for years, and we met in my office and closed the door. She sat across from me and put her hands up, palms facing my body, and pretty much s...

Week 13 This past week was my first full training week without running (mostly) or CrossBoot. It was definitely challenging to find activities that could replicate the levels of intensity I achieved in those two things. I had one bad and one good experience on the bike, and I did a lot of yoga . I also did a couple of things that I should have known better than to do. For example, on Saturday afternoon, I attended a lindy-in-the-park event, put on by a group of swing dancers who have recently begun organizing new events. (As a side note, I originally moved to Tampa because of swing dancing, and I used to be heavily involved in it; but as the local dance scene changed, my interest began to wane .) I haven't danced in over a year, and I was excited enough to want to go and see some old friends and try my dance legs out. But dancing on concrete in rubber-soled shoes was just about the last thing I should have done. Swing dancing-- lindy hop , specifically--can involve a lot of...

After another day of worrying about my injury and whether it will heal in time for me to run MCM, I was feeling defeated. I left work thinking that all I really felt like doing was going home and lying down for the whole night. And eating. Lying down and eating. My other option, since I'm still not ready to go back to CrossBoot, was to go to a yoga class. But even that seemed like work, and I just felt like giving up. I thought about how I'd feel if I chose my first option, and I knew that would potentially make me feel even worse than I already did. So, while stopped at a traffic light (of course), I used my phone to register for the yoga class at my studio, Bella Prana  (there's now an app for that!). I knew that if I registered, I wouldn't back out. So I arrived home in time to change and get to class a bit early. I hadn't taken a class from this particular instructor, Greg Hass, so I wasn't sure what to expect. The class was a Flow Level 2 class, which was...

I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to write this post, and I'm afraid to even put it in writing now, out of fear that I might curse myself (not that I'm superstitious, of course). But for the past few weeks now, I've been running without shin splints. I can't say there's absolutely no tenderness when I run--rather, after I run--but the crippling pain I once felt during each run that kept me from pushing harder no longer occurs. And with the absence of that pain comes the absence of fear. And fear, I've learned, is a powerful thing--more powerful than any other human emotion I've known. To now run without it is a beautiful experience. Earlier this week, I was able to do a 5-mile training run at a 9:10 pace. This wasn't something I set out to do, but it was something I just felt like doing in the moment. For me, that is a great pace to maintain for 5 miles. I was so elated afterward at how good I felt and with my newfound freedom to push when I wan...