ankle

I will start this by admitting that I am obsessing.  For most of the time I've been recovering I've known what day I was on.  In the last few weeks I lst track of the week.  I figured that out today and now it makes sense again that I thought I was walking at 4 months, not the 14 weeks I seem to have gotten my brain stuck on.  It actually IS 4 months. 

I am so afraid that he'll see something wrong.  I know in my mind that it is great but my perspective is weird when I look at it and the swelling that has built up in the last week or so makes it look really weird.  It's probably also weird because I don't have normal anatomy but I don't know that yet.  I am sore in a different place, a place with puffiness and it feels like something is rubbing on something else.  Realistically a tendon is rubbing on a bone anchor, which is going to resolve itself as the anchor is absorbed into the bone.  But it feels strange.  Not strange bad necessarily, just strange. 

I am so proud of my ROM and that I even have some strength in all planes.  Dorsiflexion I even have fairly reasonable strength, I think a 3/5, maybe 3+ if he was generous.  I have been stretching a lot on my wobble board (a circle that has a round base so that it tips in all directions.  At first I practiced control of movements with it, now I use it to stretch at home and we use weights on it at therapy.  I can move it more than I thought I would be able to by this point when I got the last cast off.  I even can alternate feet on the stairs if there is a rail and the steps are deep enough.  I won't be able to do that without the boot for some time but I can do it now.

I think I'm just conditioned to getting bad news about this ankle.  All the times I've heard that I need surgery, the injuries, the inability to treat my sprains because the damage was already done.  And now I have to learn to trust it.  That's not easy.  It's especially not easy when things are different.  

My foot is still returning to foot shape.  Scar tissue has altered it's shape quite a bit.  One of my exercises really pulls on that and I do the exercise many, many times per day to help with that.  Once before I was doing that and felt scar tissue tear and a nerve came loose from the scar tissue, causing some weird nerve sensations and burning for 5 minutes or so.  I think I am on the verge of having more tearing and probably more nerve release as I feel what I was feeling just before that happened.

I am scared of what he'll say about the popping on the inside (all surgery was in the joint or outsde).  I know that in reality he'll probably say that I still had a lot of swelling in the joint on that side when I was last x-rayed and that it is irritating a tendon or ligament. 

It's all stuff I can answer myself but it's hard to not worry.  After 4 months you want to hear that things are perfect in the healing process.  Honestly they probably are although I may have more irritation on the outside of the ankle than normal; that has just flared up the last few days. 

Whatever.  It is still several days away.  It's a combination of excitement and terror that are hard to explain but which make it hard to wait and hard to not worry.

Maybe I should sleep some......another busy week is about to start.