Ohhh sweet relief! I got my cortisone injection this morning and now I am feeling pretty good. My only hope is that this injection last until December 5th, so that I can have the relief and time to get prepared for the big day. The past month has been excruciating some days with pain in every step. I am not sure why some days have been worse than others without any rhyme or reason, but they definitely have been. I know that I am more than thankful to have these shots to get me through.

It has almost been two week on this 28 day challenge at work. I have been really good on it and lost about 5% of my body weight so far. I like the feeling of getting stronger. I especially notice standing up feels so much stronger, not that it was ever a problem before, I can just tell my legs are supporting me better. I am also moving faster on my bike and getting more miles in on my 30 and 60 minute rides. Ima keep on keepin on!

Day one of 28 day diet....I like "healthy eating" challenge better. LOL

Did my upper body workout over my lunch break today and they sure did feel tired working on patients in the afternoon. I need to get my arms strong, because they are going to have to do all the work after surgery for quite awhile.

I also rode my bike for 30 minutes when I got home, and I am feeling good. I really do feel a ton better when I eat good food.

Still counting down the days until December 5th. I am more focused on the next two weeks until I get my next cortisone injection. The Celebrex just isn't cutting it so much these days. I started taking Celebrex at the same time I had my last injection and I am thinking the pain relief was more from the cortisone injection than the Celebrex. Cortisone injections typically last about 3 months, and just like clockwork at 3 months post-injection my pain started coming back more and more. Good thing is that the next one will be 3 months prior to surgery, so hopefully this injection will get me through until I get the new ankle. For the next two weeks though, it will be lot's of icing and taking it easy on the weight bearing activities.

At work, there are two wellness challenges just starting. The first one is focused on fitness and logging miles that started last Monday. The second one is more focused on diet and weight loss which starts this coming Monday. I have signed up for both, but sadly have not been doing so good on my miles this first week.  My ankle has just been really sore lately and the pain wears me out. It makes me tired and lazy by the end of the day.  But I am getting my motivation on and getting prepared this weekend to follow the diet plan starting on Monday. The diet plan has a fitness component to it as well which will work along side the miles challenge. I just have to get focused and make these goals a priority and push through the pain. My hope is to get stronger and weigh even less going into this surgery to be healthier for a good successful recovery, and to have less body mass post surgery to minimize the weight on this new ankle so that it will last as long as possible.

Introduction

On April 7th, 2001 I was involved in a tragic car accident. In this accident, among the many injuries I sustained, my ankle was severely broken. The talus was completely severed and my foot was nearly detached from my leg, only hanging on by some tendons and skin on the lateral side of my ankle. Two weeks after the accident, when I was finally out of the ICU and stable enough to withstand the surgery, my ankle was put back together. It took a long time to finally regain enough mobility and strength in my ankle to be able to walk again, which I was determined to do. In the 12+ years since this injury, I have had progressively deteriorating osteoarthritis in my ankle. With each year the steps I would take became more and more painful. Last Spring (2013) after 12 years of withstanding the pain, I succumbed and went to the doctor who did my initial ankle surgery to see what I could do. He did x-rays to find that my ankle is collapsing on itself due to avascular necrosis (dying bone). He gave me the option of pain control in the form of Celebrex and cortisone shots. These are helping, but they are not erasing the fact that my ankle is continuing to deteriorate. He referred me to a Orthapedic specialist for traumatic ankle injuries, Dr. S. Haddad. Dr. Haddad took x-rays, photos, measurements, video, and a CT scan. As of now, it looks promising that I will have a total ankle replacement on December 5th of this year. The idea that this is a possibility is becoming overwhelming. I have read other blogs to see how others have dealt with their own surgeries and recoveries and decided it would be helpful for me to do the same, and maybe even help someone else out there who is going through this as well. So here goes my journey....