Last Monday morning at 6:30am I went to the hospital to have my foot rebuilt. The doctors had a plan to fix the main problem, a Tarsal Coalition, as well as a number of other problems that I had or would have as a result of the surgery. The surgery lasted 4 hours but it took me another 3 hours to come out of the anesthesia-induced coma I was in, so I missed the de-brief the doctor gave my wife. He did eventually give me a few of the details, mentioning that they made a few incisions and threw in some screws, but it wasn’t until today that I realized what had actually happened.

Today was my first post-operative appointment with my doctor to check on the healing of the incisions and to make sure my foot hadn’t become infected and fallen off. The cast technician removed the temporary plaster cast that was put on immediately after surgery and I was shocked at what I saw… Frankenfoot. The doctors made two long incisions on each side of my foot in order to place two screws and some wire to fuse some bones, cut off pieces of a few bones, and place a piece of bone into another like a shunt. They also made a small incision in my heel where they places a large screw through most of my ankle to help stabilize it. And finally they made a medium-sized incision at the back of my foot where they cut some of the tendon to try and improve my flexibility and mobility.

So yesterday I was innocently walking around with a swollen foot, but today I learned the truth about… Frankenfoot! Since there was no infection in the incision, they replaced the heavy plaster open-faced cast for a pink fiberglass one (so I could match Kendall’s last cast). We’ll wait until next week to take out the two dozen staples and re-cast… something I’m really looking forward to!