Thursday, September 07, 2006

An Update on Those Displaced Bones

I went to Bangkok for a meeting and decided to get a second opinion on the surgery and the 5 pins in my foot while I was there. The evening we arrived Arthur and I went straight to the hospital from the airport so that I could get x-rays and make an appointment to see the orthopaedic surgeon the following day. That evening we looked at the x-rays with a "regular" doctor who had time to explain the x-ray. All five bones in the mid-foot were displaced and now the pins were holding them back where they should be except for the 2nd bone (not the one connected to the big toe, but the next one) which had a small gap.

The next day I saw an orthopaedic surgeon who said the x-ray with the bones and pins looked "good enough". This alarmed me. I was thinking " What kind of good enough? You are 43 and likely to die soon anyway.... or You aren’t that athletic or anything so this will be good enough for walking around your house and neighborhood." At first I thought it was a language mistake because his first language is Thai. So on Sunday, I asked my doctor friend from church about it being "good enough" and she said that my foot will never be the same again. But she said it will work, I'll walk, and it may just be 95% (or whatever) of what it was. So I guess that's good news. I take it as good news.

This all reminds me of a story. A few years ago we were following up on a 3 year old boy with a club foot. He had surgery where a long pin was put in from his big toe down to his heel. His parents were not very vigilant or obedient to the doctors' orders and they didn't make him wear the special shoes that he was supposed to wear. They said he didn’t like to wear them and they didn’t want to force him. One afternoon he was having a nap. When they noticed him again a few hours later, he had woken up from his nap and taken the pin out his foot all by himself!
It's only now that I have 5 pins in my foot that I understand why/how he did that. It's actually not very comfortable to have these pins sticking out of my foot. It's not painful either, but I just think that it would feel a whole lot better if I pulled them all out.

Don't worry. I won't. But have to admit I’m tempted.

(Sorry no photo!)