On Thursday, March 6th, Nina is having surgery on her left leg to remove a bone spur. As is always the cause, you have to do something first before you can do anything and in this case, they have to detach the Achilles tendon before they can do anything about the spur. This will keep her out of action for several weeks as the tendon heals. According to WebMD:
After … surgery, you will likely wear a cast, walking boot, or similar device for 6 to 12 weeks. At first, the cast or boot is positioned to keep the foot pointed downward as the tendon heals. The cast or boot is then adjusted gradually to put the foot in a neutral position (not pointing up or down). Many health professionals recommend starting movement and weight-bearing exercises early, before the cast or boot comes off. Your total recovery time will probably be as long as 6 months.
The University of Wisconsin’s Sports Health website says:
The rehabilitation progresses slowly into strengthening, gait and balancing activities. Rehabilitation guidelines are presented in a criterion based progression. General time frames refer to the usual pace of rehabilitation. However, individual patients will progress at different rates depending on their age, associated injuries, pre-injury health status, rehab compliance, tissue quality and injury severity.
That means she’ll be on crutches or on a kneeling scooter for quite some time!
The interesting problem comes with getting into and out of bed! Our bed is quite high and it’s rather difficult to “hop” into bed while on crutches. We did several experiments and finally figured out that a ramp would be the best solution. So, yesterday I built a ramp. It’s 48″ long and has a lift of 10″ (meaning a 12º upward slope). I put “wings” on the front to prevent it from tipping over and a bit of a slope on the front to keep it from tipping forward. The best part was I that I had almost all of the materials here in my scrap-wood bin. I did buy the ramp itself, which is 17″ x 48″. I think it’s a good solution.
However, that isn’t the end of the problem. Nina sleeps on the left side of the bed (looking from the foot of the bed) and I sleep in the right side. We’ve slept that way for almost all of our (soon to be in June) 50 years of marriage. The surgery is on her left foot. If she were to get into bed on the left side, she would have to lift her left foot onto the bed and somehow use it to scoot onto the bed. That’s not gonna happen. So, we’re switching sides for a few weeks. That will definitely add to the adventure!
Ta ta for now!