One more toe.
Jon got the bandage taken off his foot today and the stitch taken out of this toe. Maybe his last toe to have the Flexor surgery, which cuts the tendon to make the toe stick our straight.
Dr Daly doesn’t think (at this point) that the fifth toe will need the procedure, even though it is curled like the others were.
“Three months,” she said, after plucking the stitch and reinforcing the incision with a butterfly strip. We don’t have to go back for three months.
Jon’s had so much work done on this foot, snipping the tendon is all but routine. We know the drill. Keep the bandage on, walk only in the special shoe, no showers for a week.
The special shoe irritates Jon’s foot and throws out his back.
But we both know by now that is the way of things. It’s a give and take. And Jon gets to decide if what he ultimately gets is worth the pain and discomfort it requires.
He does this with less complaint than I might.
“If it were me,” I say to him on the way home in the car, “when I got home I’d take a long shower. Not because I’m not clean (Jon had a sponge bath everyday), but because I’d miss the water.”
I can’t wait put lotion and a clean sock on his foot free of its bandage.
It seems to bother me more than him.
I think what he must be feeling but I can only do that from my limited experience. I only know the discomfort I can imagine. For me it’s about showers and warm socks, for him it’s about being able to walk with as little pain as possible.
I am truly ignorant about what he is feeling. How could I know. I’ve never experienced what he has.
We want to celebrate the good news.
If the ice cream place with the sugar-free ice cream were open we’d get some. But they won’t be back until the beginning of May. We had lunch on the way in. Our way of making the day a little more fun. ” I guess that was our celebration,” I say.
Still I stop at the market when we get into Cambridge and I buy a chocolate bar. Dark chocolate with almonds and salt.
We say we’ll take it easy the rest of the day. But after feeding the animals, bringing in wood and picking up fresh bread from Keane (we drive over a covered bridge to get to her house) we both sit down to blog.
And that’s what we’re both doing now. The day already gone to night. Dogs sleeping at our feet, the music of rain on the roof, the wood stoves keeping us warm.
