invisible, pt. two

Here’s more of my mother’s account of my foot issues (to read pt. one, click here)

Newington orthopedists asked the same questions we’d answered many times over many weeks – any kind of injury, on the playground, gym class, at home? They x-rayed your foot yet again. They did do two things – one, prescribed Motrin 800 mg each three times a day to help relieve inflammation in your foot, (Those pills were HUGE.)  and, two, they put a cast on your foot up to your knee to help retrain it to normal position. We had several appointments at Newington over a couple of months. Although you’d had no injury to your foot, they suspected that you had a condition that often follows an injury – Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy. They explained that we have sympathetic nerves that sometimes react but don’t shut off after an injury, that the nerve in your foot could be inflamed and painful because the sympathetic nerve was on for some undetermined reason. At each subsequent appointment (can’t remember how many, maybe 3 – 5), they removed the cast to examine your foot for pain and for position. I think you had 3 casts over about 6 weeks. (I only remember two – one was white plaster which broke apart on the bottom and we taped it together until my next appointment!  The next one was pink fiberglass, they had just come out with the colored casts.)  The third treatment was, after the final cast, to have physical therapy which we were fortunately able to have at the Winsted Hospital. Remember that top floor solarium? I don’t remember every therapeutic procedure but do remember you needing to put one foot into a whirlpool while they used ultrasound on your foot.  (And EVERY.SINGLE.TIME, no matter how recently I had used the bathroom, I always had to pee within minutes of sticking my foot in that water.  The therapist would get so annoyed with me.)

You also had some therapy to do at home. You did not like doing it – hold on to the counter while moving from flat footed position to up on your toes, up and down, over and over – it hurt. You were supposed to massage your foot with a dry washcloth. Possibly my favorite was you putting your foot into a bowl of rice, move it around for a while. The purpose of all these therapies was to stimulate the nerves in your foot, to turn off that sympathetic nerve and thus relieve the pain.

The end of it will come soon, perhaps tomorrow…