Update on Ben's foot

After Monday's all day ER visit, Tuesday was filled with doctor appointments and tests. We saw the podiatrist, did bloodwork, an ECG, and a chest x-ray, then a visit with the primary care doctor to review all the results. He gave Ben clearance for the surgery. We ran out of time and had to come home to pick up the kids, then went back to the podiatrist's office for follow-up and to set up the surgery.

Wednesday, Ben checked in at 10:30a.m. at the Surgery Center. Should have been in surgery at 11:30a.m. but the patient before him took quite a bit longer than expected. Had things gone as scheduled, I could have brought him home before the kids were even out of school. He finally went into the operating room at 1:15p.m. I left and dropped off his prescriptions, picked the girls up, picked Garrett up, picked up the meds, dropped the kids off to childcare for a couple hours, and got back about 3:20p.m. just in time to wait in Recovery with Ben until he was able to be discharged. We picked up the kids and got home around 5:30p.m. Wow, another medical day! I haven't spend this much time in hospitals and doctor offices since I worked at the hospital in Albuquerque. Even staying at the hospital with Ben for the couple days for his hip replacement didn't seem this hectic. I am glad to have him home now and let him rest. He's doing great and even took a shower today. Luckily we still have the shower chair from the hip surgery.

Ben's injury was on the right foot. The three middle metatarsals were broken in two pieces. These are the long bones on the top of the foot that connect with a joint that then connects to the toes. For the actual surgery, the doctor made an incision on the top of the foot just before where the toes connect to the foot. He pushed a wire rod through the bones of the toe and out the end of the toe, then pushed it back through to the metatarsal to connect the two broken pieces back together. This will hold the two pieces together to heal, and keep them straight with the toe. He did this for each of the three middle toes. Then a white ball (actually looks like a bead) was threaded onto the wire at the end of the toe to hold the wire in place. I could only get a picture of the white balls on his toes. You can see the wire is only 1 mm wide, like the size of a pencil lead.
This is a picture of the x-ray printout they gave us. The white spaces are between the toes. The gray parts are the bones. The wire rods are the dark lines. We will be getting a cd with the before and after x-rays next week, so I will post those when I get them so you can see the way the bones were broken and crooked.