Friday, January 18, 2008

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly
ie The continuing saga of my numb foot

I have been trying to come up with a post that explains how I feel about having just completed my first half month stent on service in 15 months, but I don't have the emotional energy right now.

So I am going to continue on with the tale of my numb foot. Yesterday I went to my friendly foot and ankle otho guy for exercise testing to try to determine why my foot goes numb and where the problem is. So, off I went to the ortho clinic in my exercise clothes. He examined me and then we went to the PT gym where I walked on the tread mill until I had symptoms (twice- about 15 and then 10 minutes). Then he examined me and we determined the following things: 1. The bottom of my foot is completely numb, 2. There maybe a vascular component to the top of the foot symptoms, 3- The site where the nerve is bothered is as it exits my poor little scarred inside of my ankle, and let me tell you his tapping on that nerve to confirm that was miserable.

Diagnosis: post radiation tarsal canal pseudo compartment syndrome- Psuedo because that isn't really a compartment except in me where the scarring from my surgeries and radiation has essentially created a compartment.

So where does that leave me

The good: Everyone is now on the same page- both of my treating orthopedic surgeons have reached the same conclusion and the same diagnosis

The bad: Back to PT for me. We are going to try noninvasive ways to break up the scar. So, I get to hang out with Jonathan more

The ugly: Both surgeons also now agree that it is very unlikely that there will be a nonsurgical fix for this. However, no one wants to rush into anything this soon after my radiation.

There you go. That is the state of the foot.

4 comments:

Kim Tracy Prince said...

It's funny that I do not think of you as a "cancer patient" (see my post at http://houseofprince.blogspot.com/2008/01/i-dont-have-any-marijuana.html) - not funny "haha" but funny strange. All along your saga I never really thought about the cancer as you having cancer. I thought about it as you having a cancerous tumor in your foot, and with that change in syntax there are two very different paradigms. Maybe if you had to do chemotherapy which would affect your whole system and thus rendering you "sick" vs. "disabled" it would have been different. "She has cancer" is a much scarier statement to me than "she has a tumor in her foot, and it's cancerous."

Anyway. It wouldn't matter because I would visit you either way and I would bring you whatever you wanted. In this case it was milk.

Dr. Lisa said...

I know. I have never really thought of myself as a cancer patient either. Hence why I referred to Lefty in the third person. Coping, you do the best you can.

Anonymous said...

Sorry about your dumb... I mean numb foot. Glad your doctor friends could come up with a simple name for your problem :)

Love, LisaD

Dr. Lisa said...

Yeah the name sounds like they made it up, which I think they did.