Deja vu

 In both collages, the photo on the left is the new bone growth stimulator for my broken foot. The one on the right is the one I used for my fractured pelvis. 

Otherwise, the drill is the same. I wear the device for 30 minutes each day, the clock resets at midnight Pacific time, and it's a use it or lose it device. I've got 270 doses and once I started the device, the count down clock started. In another 265 days, this device will become trash (no recycling which stinks).

Insurance covered this 100%, probably because the claim is later in our benefits year. I was pretty annoyed by the medical rep who brought it by. He came to the door without a mask on so I said (in my own mask) "where's your mask?" Oh, he said, out in my car. Yeah go get it. Jerk. 

About my foot—an update

I broke the third metatarsal on May 16 (the break is in the foot, not the toe but it’s the third metatarsal). It broke clean through and as I wrote then, my orthopedist put me in a walking boot and continued following up with me.

I saw him June 23, when he said I could ditch the boot and use the carbon plate, and then again on August 4. At that point he said I could stop wearing the plate but I wasn’t cleared to run for another three months. I'm to see him then.

I’ll admit I tried a couple of trots (cannot call them runs) and my foot hurt, so I stopped. Things improved and I thought great, this may take a lot longer than I want but I’m on the mend.

Except in the last few weeks, I’ve had a shooting burning pain on the top of my toe on the same foot. Basically, it hurts when I point my toe. So if I were in child’s pose, my toe would hurt like the dickens. Since that wasn’t a broken bone issue, I got an appointment with the podiatrist I saw a couple of years ago.

Unfortunately about four days ago, the broken spot in my foot started hurting again. Ugh.

I saw the podiatrist today and told her about both things, and about the weird pain I’d had on the top of that same foot way back in March right as lockdown started. She got an x-ray of my foot and yep, she said, you can clearly see the break.

She thinks that painful spot on the top of my foot may have been referred pain from the third metatarsal as it was in the process of breaking.

The burning pain, she said, is almost certainly nerve pain. The medial dorsal cutaneous nerve runs from that bony spot on the top of the foot to the big toe and the next toe--it splits and each toe gets a nerve. She said that nerve has probably been aggravated by all of this and by the micro adjustments I make when I walk due to the broken foot. And it's true, I'm not walking normally, I can tell.

What’s less clear is whether it’s healing properly or not. She said there’s a chance I have a delayed union, or possibly a nonunion fracture. Because I was diagnosed over three months ago with this broken bone, she said she can prescribe a bone growth stimulator for my foot.

Well I’ve been there before with my pelvis so I know the drill.

She also wanted the records from my orthopedist so I jumped through those hoops to get those over to her. Once she’s got the original x-ray and dx from May 16, she can prescribe the bone growth stimulator. I’ll see her in another month when we’ll get another x-ray. She said we may need an MRI to see what’s going on, but we aren’t there yet.

In the meantime, I’m still not running but she did say it would be OK to use our indoor rowing machine. Rowing is boring but if that's my only option, then I guess I will be bored.

Good-bye and good riddance

Bone growth stimulator

In March, my physiatrist prescribed a bone growth stimulator to help my broken pelvis recover better and faster. As I shared then, this is a medical device that could only be used once a day for 30 minutes; once I started using it on day 1, I had exactly 269 treatments left. At the end of the full 270 days, the device would turn into a piece of expensive inert trash.

On December 7, the device pulled it's version of Cinderella and is now dead. And I’m pleased to say I used that thing faithfully all but one day I was at home (we got home really late and I just said no). I even used it on the day I had the lumpectomy. The rest of the days I missed, I was traveling. The device can’t be put through any sort of TSA screening so thankfully I didn’t have to try to take it with me on those trips.

Altogether, I completed 243 of 270 treatments. And while I got really sick of using it (seriously, you cannot do anything other than stand or walk around awkwardly while wearing it), I hope my broken bone got the full benefit.

Living in a cage

OK it’s not really a cage. Just a partial cage. An expensive partial cage.

This is a bone growth stimulator, which my physiatrist prescribed in January. Getting the prescription through the insurance review and approval process took six weeks. And it’s not cheap either: $4500, of which I’ll owe about $1000.

Since it’s a prescription device, it’s got all sorts of very specific parameters. I can use it just once a day for 30 minutes at a time, and it should be used about the same time every day. As you can see from the photo, I can't sit down while using it. So I stand around awkwardly or try to do stuff that doesn't require bending over. I'm holding the controls, which don't really fit into most pockets. So that adds to the awkwardness of standing.

The device resets at 10 PM Central and flat won’t let me double up doses in one day. It’s also metered and has 270 doses. Once I started using it, the clock started. When I hit the 270th day, that’s it, the device becomes nothing more than weird looking trash. It also can’t be recycled, which bothers me a lot.

It also can’t go through an x-ray machine which means if I’m still using this when I head to Idaho for our family reunion, I can’t take it with me.