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My journey from the date of my accident back in October 2005 to now has been up and down (literally every step). My right leg currently much shorter after badly shattering my heel due to a head on car crash. Immediate surgery was required closing off a perforated bowel due to the seat belt and dealing with fracture blisters. Within three months I had a skin graft applied over the area of one of the blisters; after six months had surgery for extension and releasing of ligaments and cutting of ingrown nails in my toes and orthotics to improve balance in my leg heights but my heel has still never been touched due to weak tissue/skin injuries from fracture blisters.
Below - a fracture blister gone wrong (this is what stopped me getting heel reconstruction surgery).
Best orthotic I found to be able to walk, return to work and reduce overall day to day pain was to cut a hole in the inner sole of each of my shoes to reduce pressure on my little toe causing a very painful callus. Simple and it worked! The pain in the heel and surrounding joints will just have to wait.
After living with the shattered heel for over 13 years and achieving many goals within living life and my golf sports turf management career I got to a point that something must be done as the pain levels were increasing everyday I continued to do what I was doing, pushing myself through to the next day and was now subjected to using a golf cart to finish 18 holes of golf. So here I am today after receiving notice from my case manager that ACC (who has been excellent in my case) has accepted the surgeons option for surgery which I am excited about for sure.
After understanding what will be involved in the surgery (releasing of toe ligaments, relocating dislocated tendons, shaving of protruding bone and inserting a bone wedge to gain height back in heel) I wanted to know how to get the best results from the surgery (pre and post). That is now my mission!
I am still awaiting a timeframe for surgery to develop a plan but I have been thinking what do I need to do to and who do I ask to get my body in the an improved physical state for surgery with regards to nutrition, exercise, stress levels etc. I soon realised that I have everyone around me that I can draw this vital information from - my wife Sam, all the practitioners in our clinic, doctors, surgeons, my own personal study, friends and family and people who have been through similar surgeries before. I am set, I just have to ask!
The first week of this new journey will be looking at my nutrition. For the next 5 days I will be recording my current food intake to determine what levels of nutrients I am ingesting and finding deficiencies that I may have to correct. Will post my findings in my next blog.
I hope that any of this information I post may help you with any situations you may be currently experiencing.
Until next time.
Cheers, Marty.