Life in the boot is … interesting, to say the least. For instance, I never paid attention to the order of dressing. Underwear first, sure, and bra before shirt, but socks? Pants? As long as these come before tennis shoes it’s all gravy. Except with the boot. Since the boot must be worn at all times (except when showering & changing clothes), socks and pants must come before boot. Boot is not the equivalent of sock; it can’t be put on before pants. Yesterday I kind of forgot this and had to fight with the Velcro a bit.
The “attention” is annoying, too. At first it was like, okay, yeah, patients are curious. They see you with the boot and ask what happened. They’re concerned, I guess. Now? Now I’m over it. Please stop asking. It’s just a freakin’ broken foot. Obviously some sort of injury occurred to cause the wearing of said boot. I may not know what that injury was, but point being you don’t have to ask about it. Seriously. You don’t. It’s getting embarrassing.
Walking without a shoe on the other foot is a pain in the ass too–almost literally. More a pain in the hip. But the imbalance between the legs is definitely noticeable. At least with a shoe on the other foot my legs are roughly equivalent and I don’t notice the difference as much.
Boot = not knowing where my foot is in space. I’m constantly bumping the boot into things, which will be tricky in the OR today. Can’t be knocking over the instrument trays because I forgot the boot.
Broken right foot? Yeah, no driving. Need a ride everywhere. I hate begging coworkers for rides to work, but what can I do? My husband’s schedule doesn’t always allow for taking me to work at the times I need to be there. Picking me up, sure, but the delivery is the problem. And then there’s the cosplay work: I can’t sew. Operating the pedal just isn’t feasible with the right foot, and I haven’t learned how to control the speed of the machine with my left foot.
On the other hand, the boot has helped immensely with the pain. I don’t feel it nearly as much. Last night after work was painful even with the boot, but I think it’s because I was off the foot much of the weekend and then had to walk almost all day on it, so it was rebelling. Fingers crossed it doesn’t do that after today’s long day. (Speaking of which, I thank the boot for allowing me to work. I’d hate to think what I would’ve done if I couldn’t work like this.)
Three more weeks. I can’t believe it’s only been one week so far. It feels like the boot is one with me. Or I’m one with the boot. Whichever is more deep and philosophical.
Three more weeks and I’m back to normal. This is my first broken bone, and I hope it’s the only one. It’s not worth the hassle. Just let me have my arthritis and bipolar. They can be managed with meds and aren’t really, like, visible. I guess it’s the introvert in me; I want as little unnecessary attention as possible. (I say as I type up a long blog post whining about the woes of wearing a boot for a broken foot.)
So this has been my experience (so far) with wearing a boot for a broken foot. If you’ve gotten this far, you’ve read the long of it–now here’s the short of it: Annoying, but necessary.
Three more weeks. Geez-o-Pete.
AJ Mullican, Author 