So What Happened to Glorya's Foot?

What’s Up with Glorya’s foot?

Another, ‘only I could do it’ kind of stories. It was the first week of January, January 5th I believe. I had my hand in a cast & reached to get a shirt out of my hubby’s drawer & I pulled it out too fast. Since my one hand was in a cast I couldn’t catch it & it fell on my foot. OUCH! It really hurt the top of my foot but then I couldn’t bear weight on my foot to go get some ice so I sent one of the kids. I sat on the bed & looked at the bottom of my foot. Not a pretty sight. I could see a tendon rolled like a ball in the middle of my foot & I thought to myself, “Great! I just ruptured my plantar fascia! I can’t believe I dropped a DRAWER & it RUPTURED the tendon!?!?” I was mostly just mad. I didn’t bother going to the hospital that night because I knew I needed to be seen by a foot guy so I waited until the next day to call my wonderful podiatrist, Dr. Gor. He’s so down-to-earth & really attentive; he called me back & scheduled an appointment. He told me to stay off of it & rest. That’s all I needed to do.

Well, I kind of listened. I went to North Carolina to visit my dear old childhood friend, Alisa Barnes. I had already booked the flight before I ruptured the ligament & I figured I’d get more rest NOT chasing my kids & opted to watch her adorable two kids & spend time with my bestie. We had a glorious time! Shopping & dinner & shopping! I slept like a baby in our hotel. It was wonderful. But I was doing a lot of shopping & therefore a lot of walking when I really wasn’t supposed to be walking (and I didn’t bring my crutches b/c it was too hard to drag a bag & be on crutches.) Looking back I see that this was probably not the best idea. I came home with my foot aching worse than ever! But I got a desperately needed Mommy break so I got an orthotic boot & literally stayed off it for weeks.

Back to the Hand

3 weeks after I had my wrist cast on I returned to get the cast off & I had a bad feeling. My hand was hurting more than it did before I had the cast on! I figured it was because I was using crutches with a cast & crutches are not designed for people in casts.  They cut off my cast & the pain was excruciating. So they casted me & I had a new cast for an additional 3 weeks. Ugh. I knew it was coming but one could hope right?

About this time an angel of mercy, Cheryl Dudek, brought me a Roll About, this wonderful scooter that enables me to have more mobility but no pressure on my hand! Hallelujah! It was like Christmas Morning when she brought me that thing! What a wonderful gift.

3 more weeks pass & I got my wrist cast off, I still can’t walk but my hand is free. Very sore but now I just needed Physical Therapy and my hand should be as good as new. Only problem was I had numbness & tingling in my hand, foot & up my leg. The increase in pain & numbness was concerning for me & my doctors.  We were concerned that it could be something vascular as my family has a history of clotting disorders. My 30 year old younger brother, Bill, developed 3 blood clots & a pulmonary embolism after arthroscopic shoulder surgery, a very rare complication in someone his age. After his life-threatening ordeal we discovered a disturbing number of relatives on my father’s side who suffered from clotting disorders, many of them young & otherwise healthy. Even now my brother remains on 15 mg of Coumadin, a blood-thinning medication. 15 mg is a lot by the way. Coumadin dosage depends on each person’s individual blood but many people are reach therapeutic levels on dosages around 5-7 mg. When he told me he was on 15 mg of Coumadin to be therapeutic I was pretty concerned that my blood might be as thick as syrup as well.  As soon as I told Dr. Gor about my brother’s situation I got an ultrasound to rule out a blood clot in my leg. It was negative.

The pain increased in my foot & we thought maybe it was broken or something else was damaged. Thus I began a road of Cat Scans, MRI’s, arterial studies, ultrasounds & an EXCRUCIATING nerve conduction study with NO ANSWERS. No one could tell me why my foot would get blue & cold & numb & why my pain got worse the more I rested. Each specialist kept saying something about RSD under their breath or as a side comment. I had never heard of RSD. What in the world where they talking about? And why did none of my specialists want to give me the diagnosis?

Any prudent nurse will tell you that if they do not know something they will look it up & find the answer. So I looked it up. RSD-Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy.  We’ve all heard the saying, “Ignorance is Bliss” well, this was definitely one of those times when ignorance was bliss & knowing was well, not.