My days still consisted of laying around and keeping my ankle propped up for the most part. With my portable plinth table set up, I started doing some exercises. I started out with just one set once a day and planned on working my way up from there. The amount of endurance I lacked was amazing to me. In just that short amount of time I went from being up on my feet and active from 5:30am to about 8 or 9pm every day to barely being able to be up for ten minutes without feeling exhausted. Just getting myself up and making it to the bathroom was a challenge. Planning my minutes and activity for the day was becoming necessary. There was no get up and go anymore...at least not yet.
My next compression wrap change was for Friday the 13th. This visit I had a different therapist and she was a bit concerned after unwrapping my ankle to see a lot of redness on the top of my foot. She was a PTA (like me) and she did exactly what I would have done, she went to get a PT to get another opinion on the situation. Two PT's came in and took a look and gave their opinions. The PTA used a sharpy to mark the periphery of the redness so that they can compare the changes on my next visit. With my foot unwrapped I touched around the redness and it appeard to be in the places that I was feeling the most pressure from the boot, and so I was not to concerned. The redness appeared to be from pressure and actually began to clear while I laying there with it unwrapped and partially elevated.
When the therapist's wrapped my leg, I paid close attention to how they did it. My doctor's office indicated that the technique is a precise technique that therapist's are specially trained in. As PTA, this peaked my curiousity and I wanted to learn anything I could out this experience. The way they wrapped my ankle and calf was very much like what I learned in school, so the next day I unwrapped my ankle to inspect the redness. I had been keeping the strap on my boot over that area a little looser and sure enough it was going away and was smaller than the sharpy outline today.
Re-wrapping my ankle was pretty easy and felt really good. I was starting to notice the pattern with the wraps, they felt really good after being wrapped and as the time wears on the pressure starts to get more uncomfortable. I was starting to get some muscle spasms and the little electric shock feelings down into my toes. The shocks are just the nerves reconfiguring and trying to work themselves out. The spasms are the muscles response from the lack of moving and the increasing atrophy.
My next visit to the PT place for my wrap change was on Monday the 16th. This visit was with the original PT I saw the first time. Along with my chart notes and what I offered, she was filled in on my status and looked over my foot. The redness was still there, but the swelling was doing better. Once she learned I wrapped my own ankle, she was impressed and further noted that there was no reason for me to travel that far for them to do it. She noted that my wounds look fine and if I felt capable of wrapping it on my own then I was good to go until I saw the doctor on Friday. So I cancelled the rest of my appointments and looked forward to my doctor's appointment on Friday.
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