Post-Surgery Update

Friends!

I went into surgery on February 26 to remove my tumor and some of my fibula bone. It was an eventful morning arriving at the hospital at 6am to head into surgery around 7:30-8:00am. We met with the surgeon before surgery so he could tell us again what he was planning to do. By 7:30am I was knocked out by the medicine they gave me. I barely remember leaving the pre-op room which was nice.

I got out of surgery and woke up in post-op around 10:30am. I was in quite a lot of pain at that time, really just in need of anything to take the pain away. Nothing the nurse was giving me was working and I felt miserable. We had tried so many medicines in that short hour time span I was in post-op that the rest of the day I was very nauseous and could only eat crackers.

The surgeon spoke with my parents after my surgery while I was recovering. He assured them he got clear margins around the tumor which is exactly what we wanted. He also removed about 2/3 of my fibula bone (from the knee down). He was able to reconstruct my ligaments that originally attached to my fibula bone and attached them to my tibia bone. One thing that he was not prepared for was where my peroneal nerve ran through. A branch of my peroneal nerve ran right through my tumor. Which explains all the numbness, tingling, the pain I had felt at the beginning of this journey. He made the best decision for me in the long run and had to cut that branch of the nerve running right through the tumor. He said he could see it start at one end of the tumor and where it came out on the other end. Now that cut nerve as left me with something that is called foot drop, or drop foot. This basically means I have no feeling on the top of my foot and no ability to lift my toes/foot up toward me. I can still bend my toes down and wiggle them down but no matter how hard I try or focus my toes/foot will not bend upward. This is okay because I know the surgeon made the right call when getting all of the cancer out which is all that matters to me. There are braces I can wear on my foot and in my shoes to help me walk normally again, but it’s most likely going to be like that the rest of my life.

I recovered in the hospital for 4 days and went home on Friday. I am still learning how to move around. I did physical therapy in the hospital for 3 of the 4 days and proved one of my nurse wrong who said I’d be there for a week and I told her I’ll be out before that. I am in a full leg ACL brace with foam to protect the brace from the incision on my right leg. I am locked at a wonderful straight 180 degrees with no bending of my knee for 2 weeks. I can put as much weight on my leg as I can bear which is slowly becoming more weight, but it is challenging with my drop foot because instead of walking heal-to-toe my toes are first since there dropped so it is more like toe-to-heal. The brace also makes sleeping near impossible since I have to sleep on my back in the same position I would be in if I was sitting up. It has definitely made me appreciate the ability to walk and bend my knee.

We will go back to my orthopedic oncologist in about a week and he will hopefully unlock my brace to be able to bend up to 30 degrees. He said he would do this every two weeks till I have the full range of motion back in my knee. I will be able to sleep with the brace off soon too which will be a wonderful thing to me, I can’t wait for that day lol. Right now, I am trying to take it one day at a time, moving extremely slow, eager to learn to walk again with my new drop foot.

Prayers

• Pain from walking to minimize and go away
• Pain from wearing the brace to go away
• My foot to get stronger so I can do everything I can to fix my drop foot
• My patience as I am extremely helpless with a straight leg making everything quite difficult
• My leg to continue to strengthen as it’s able to move more