Foot surgery

[Suzyhayes]

A friend of mine is suffering pain and discomfort due to cavus foot and bunions.

She has been advised that she needs multiple lesser foot metatarsal surgery followed by bunion surgery so three separate ops on each foot. She feels very apprehensive about these precedures. Has anyone here had this surgery and was it successful. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks

[cyberbarn]

I have had four different surgeries on my feet, two when I was a teen, so 30 years ago, and two recently. The two newest ones were done by podiatric surgeons as day cases in a little local cottage hospital and they were great fun! So in and out in less than five hours!

The first one they sedated me for which I didn't like, so the second one they only put in the nerve block so I was conscious throughout, I could even talk to the surgeon. I didn't have a plaster just bandages and a special walking boot. For the first couple of days I only got up off the sofa to go to the toilet and kept my foot elevated the whole time. This is very important. My surgeon also recommended packets of peas for 10 minutes of every hour, but I used a flexible ice sheet from our cool box so that I didn't have to get up and refreeze it.

I only had naproxen and paracetamol as I can't take codeine, and I could only manage the naproxen for two days before I got stomach pains (and that was with PPIs) so after that it was paracetamol only and it was fine. Although they gave me crutches to steady myself, as we were supposed to walk straight away I gave up on them after a week.

This is in huge contrast to 30 years ago where I had to stay a week in hospital, full general anaesthetic, plaster cast with no walking for 6 weeks and so on.

As for successes, the first ones stood me in good stead for 30 years, and I only needed the second ones because arthritis had set in. The surgery on my right foot has been fine, it got rid of the huge boney lump on top of my foot so that I could wear shoes again without pain. My left foot took longer to sort out as the stitches broke open early and the wound got a little infected, and the toe went stiff from it not moving enough as it was healing which can sometimes happen. So they did another procedure (basically put a nerve block in and yanked the toe about to free it, didn't hurt at all) and it is much better now but it did take over a year to heal, whereas the right one was done and dusted in 6 months.

The research on foot surgery show that 85% of people have really good outcomes a year later once everything is heeled. Of the rest most of them just take a little longer. Yes, there is a very tiny chance that something might go wrong, but it is the same with everything in life. We have a much bigger chance of being in a car accident just by going down to the shops!

I hope your friend has a fun time with the surgery. It really isn't anything to worry about. Do they have support for the first two weeks after surgery? If not, give me a shout as I am a single parent and had to put loads of stuff in place so that I didn't have to do anything for two weeks.