In the beginning....part 3

December 18. A day my foot decided to express itself.

Dr's follow-up to continued Cam walker. My foot was not better at all.

Looking back with 20/20 hindsight I can see my Dr being flustered. This had gone beyond his experience, a good doctor, but not much experience with this specific problem. He said surgery was definitely on the table for discussion, but he wanted to try using a bone stimulator for a month or so and he

wanted to give me a cortisone shot. Because I had been researching this as extensively as Google will allow a novice...I brought up that I thought cortisone shots weren't given to people with fractures. He said it might hinder the healing slightly, but he was hoping it would help with the swelling and reset the healing process.

The shot was one of the longest I have in memory. He put it through the top of my foot, because he said the top was a less sensitive area than the bottom,

and it hurt. From the beginning to the end it hurt like nothing else. There was also Novocaine in the shot, which would buy me a few hours of numbness but I was not to expect my foot to feel better until the 21st.

While we were waiting for the Novocaine to numb my foot I asked the doctor why my toes on the affected foot were purple. This discoloration was something I had just begun to notice. He was baffled and unable to give me a good explanation.

When the numbness wore off the pain was incredibly intense, my hobbling slowed down to quarter speed and I had to take serious pain killers that night and the next day. On the 21st my foot started off with a dull ache but progressed into a sharp pain. I called the doctor and he ordered an MRI.

Over the course of those few days I had been speaking to my friends and one of them told me about the Hospital for Special Surgery. I looked first at the podiatrists and saw that one of them had written a case-study or a non-union sesamoid fracture. He had treated a professional ballerina and used a bone-stimulator for a year, but she was able to go back to her professional dance career.

This, plus everything else I had been reading started sending off bells in my head. We were talking about surgery incredibly early in the progression of this injury. And I became more and more aware that this surgery and injuries to the sesamoids and sesamoidectomies were not to be taken lightly, were rare and needed to be treated with as great care as possible.
I decided to try a set up an appointment with a doctor at this hospital. This proved difficult at first. The referral line found an orthopedic surgeon (my request was that I wanted a second opinion on a non-union sesamoid fracture) who took insurance (hurdle 1). Hurdle 2 was that this Dr. Ellis was booked until May.

Luckily for me I have a friend who was able to get me an appointment on the afternoon of Dec 23 between surgeries.

In my desperation to avoid surgery I also scheduled an appointment at the Foot Center of NY first thing in the morning of Dec 23 and with an acupuncturist/Chinese Medicine doctor my dancer friend recommended, Dr. Ting on Dec 28th.