Back to normal life in an abnormal time

Tuesday – Doctor day

By happenstance, my one month pacemaker checkup with the cardiologist is the same day as my splint removal with the foot doctor. So Tuesday May 26 was a very, very big day in my drastically narrowed life! The first time anything happens for 13 days, and both big things happen at once. I basically had nothing better to do than anticipate it for a whole 13 days!

That was the day after Memorial Day, and my good fortune was that Ed had a work holiday. He works in a bank and is therefore an “essential worker”. So he was perfectly happy (or at least did a good impression of being perfectly happy) to take me to medical-land and retrieve me.

As I probably mentioned, I live six blocks from the better of the two (IMO :) big medical complexes in Reno – St Mary’s. My cardiologist is in the six story medical building on the north side of Sixth St, and ROC – Reno Orthopedic – is right across the street, same block on the south side. Their entrance doors are about 30 yards from each other.

Medical buildings are so big and spacious! Normally this is a nice a feature, but not when you’re hopping on a government-issue walker.

30 hops to the elevator, 15 hops to the hallway COVID screening, another 15 to the sign-in desk. Even after I was called, it was a good 25 hops from my seat in the waiting room to the treatment room they put me in. Very aerobic day.

I was so late for the orthopedic appointment that the almost cancelled my ass, but god bless ’em, they took me in 35 minutes late! I’m grateful, but it was a pretty disorganized visit.

• I’m admitted – woo!
• Nice young lady comes in. I suddenly remember that I FORGOT to bring my boot, which I had bagged up and set next to the door but forgot to bring. This is going to be a problem, they can’t let me leave without some sort of protection.
• She clips off my splint. I see my foot for the first time in two weeks. The stitches look gross, but are just fine.
• She leaves, and I call Ed, so see if he can drop by my place and pick up the boot.
• While I’m still waiting for the doctor, the nice young lady reappears with my boot. This means blessed Ed has showed up. I’m cool with the system now, but Ed is stuck waiting for however long the rest of it takes. Sorry Ed …
• A loooong wait, 35-40 minutes, before Dr Lundeen appears. Annoying, but completely deserved since I arrived so late. He has two young fellas with him this time. One fellow I think of as “data entry guy”. He was there for our first visit, glued to his iPad. The second kid just watched. The tiny examining room was pretty crowded with us four dudes … in this time of social distancing.
• Anyway … the doctor looks at the wound, pronounces it “very nice”. We chat for a while (see below), I ask him the questions on my list, and the interesting part is over!
• A shorter wait, maybe ten minutes, and a quiet, very young kid comes in to clip out the stitches. I assume the face down position on the table, and he does his thing. After I jumped out of my skin at an initial very sharp pain he got careful and I took deep breaths, and the rest was completely painless!
• The doctor had mentioned “compression socks”. I told the kid, he disappears and brought back two pairs. and that was that!

Thank goodness it was a very temperate day and there was a shady spot around the corner to hang out, because good ole Ed had to wait for an hour or so all told to retrieve my ass and take me home.

Nevada has loosened it’s quarantine rules as of this very week! Outdoor dining is now allowed. Ed had the bright idea to get a beer at the outdoor table at Washoe Grill.One thing led to another, and the upshot was that I was able to buy him dinner and a couple of beers! It was a little disorienting to engage with the outside world in a non-medical capacity for the first time in over a month, but I got back into the swing soon enough.

On the road back to “normal”?

Recovery has gone very well so far. Until Reno summer hit I was doing the shorter, down river loop – down to the Lake St Bridge and back 3-4 times a week. I go to PT, physical therapy twice a week. It consists mostly of the therapist massaging the thickness out of my ankle for 20 minutes or so. It’s very pleasant and relaxing.

There is one interesting footnote I’ll mention: When my coffee shop re-opened (yay!) and I showed up in my boot, a friend dropped a little factoid that certain antibiotics can cause ruptured tendons. Read about it here.  You coulda knocked me over with a feather so to speak.

I went back and looked at the timeline, and my ankle was sore BEFORE my pacemaker procedure, but it definitely didn’t snap until after. I don’t even know if they gave me antibiotics that day, but it sure is interesting….

Six weeks in, it feels quite good.

Physical therapy, life after the boot

To recap: I got the splint removed on the last Wednesday in May. I am to wear the boot for another 5-6 weeks. My check-up appointment is the last Tuesday in June, which is five weeks, less a day..

Physical Therapy (PT) is to commence now also. In normal times ROC would be happy to do my therapy as well as perform the operation. I did this once before for a broken wrist rehab. But now since the building is being remodeled they have to farm it all out. i was mildly annoyed, but it turned out to be excellent, because the place I went to is in the building right across the parking lot from the Art Museum. It’s been a realtors office and a couple of different incarnations of art gallery over the years. It was perfect as an art gallery. When the First Thursday Museum party ended at 7 the art-sters would naturally filter next door to party on a little longer at the gallery.

Anyway … now that space is a physical therapy place … studio? salon? office?  There are two therapists, a receptionist, and a masked girl whose function seems to be to wipe down any surface that anybody touches. My whole PT experience took place under COVID, so I never actually saw anybody’s face the whole time. Weird.

The first few weeks were quite mellow, Carrie the co-owner was my therapist. The half-hour session was devoted to her massaging my leg. I would assume the face-down position on the table with my leg hanging off and she would just rub it in various ways. Very relaxing!

Then she started adding little exercise into the routine. They were cool because I thought the leg felt quite strong for just walking, but these simple exercises isolated ways in which it still wasn’t strong at all.

I had my final visit with good old Dr Lundeen. He told me it takes basically a year to get all the way back to normal. Everything looked good and I probably won’t need to come back.

About that same time Carrie offloaded me to her the therapist they hired, a young lady who was very nice but a slave driver. She made me work much harder. I don’t really mind the endless reps of exercises, but the attempts to balance on one leg for way longer than I can do it I found exhausting and frustrating. Anyway, towards the end of August, the therapists also declared that we had done as much as we needed to do, so now my assisted rehab is officially over!