Foot Surgery Chronology

As anyone who has read my blog knows, I’ve had an ongoing problem with my right foot for several years. The root cause has been an arthritic bone growth at the base of my right big toe. Because of this, I cannot straighten that toe out and the ball of my foot takes all the weight whenever I walk. This causes a large callus to build up and occasionally the callus gets so thick and hard that it breaks loose – giving me a hole in the bottom of my foot, right where I walk.

Compounding the problem is that a couple of times (three times in fact) when I’ve gotten it healed up, I’ve developed an infection under the healed skin and gotten sepsis. Sepsis is NOT fun, and it’s resulted in multiple days in the hospital each time.

Here’s a bit of that chronology:

·       May 2017 - First bout of sepsis

·       December 2017 – Getting weekly skin grafts

·       January 2018 – Second bout of sepsis

·       April 2018 – Wound healed (at least for a while)

·       May 2021 – Callus broke off again! New podiatrist, new shoes, slow healing!

Last year, my podiatrist decided to take a new approach – of removing one of the two sesamoid bones which are under that toe. I wrote at the time about things leading up to that surgery (see here with lots of pictures).

The picture right after my surgery is not pretty. Although the sesamoid bone is not very large, the surgery requires about a 2-1/2” opening which is then stitched together.

[Foot 5/2022]

As before, the healing process, while fairly quick at the beginning, reach a certain point and then came to a halt. Here’s what it looked like in September and again in early December.

[Foot 9/2022]

[Foot 12/12/2022]

It was frustrating. I was wearing special shoes. I spent nearly all day ensconced in my recliner. I often used a cane when walking. It seemed that nothing was working! Finally seemed to have everything healed up around mid-December.

Then, on Christmas Day, everything “went south” (again)! I developed an infection under the latest graft, developed two large blood blisters next to the graft, and ended up with my third bout of sepsis. Back to the hospital again! Following my release, I met with the podiatrist and he just cut off all the skin in the area, including the graft and the skin over the two drained blisters. It’s not pretty!

[Foot 12/29/2022]

So, what to do next. Three changes this time. First, use placental material for the graft instead of the artificial skin. Second, wrap my foot in a “football” – called that because your foot ends up being about the size and shape of a football (the office joke when wrapping it is “laces up”.) Here’s a description, and here’s a picture.

[Football wrap]

This also meant that I had to wear a special surgical shoe as the football does not fit in a regular shoe. But the third change was also key. After doing some research at the insistence of my wife, I added some protein drink to my diet. This was supposed to speed the healing process – and it did!

As a result, instead of taking seven months to heal in 2022, it only took three weeks of grafts and a month of healing. The podiatrist kept me in the football for one more week, and now I’ve moved to an extra layer of pad (with a hole so that the pressure is around the wound but not on it).

So, here’s what things look like today.

[Foot 2/2023]

After a month+ of having to take sponge baths to avoid getting my dressing wet, I got to take a real shower again. And when the shower was over I didn’t have to worry about leaving a trail of blood on the floor (all the water in the shower would soften up the wound scab before).

I’m still taking it easy – sitting in my recliner most of the time, keeping the pressure off my foot, taking my protein drinks, etc. But I think that this time we may finally have taken care of the problem.

To God be the glory!