Mom's Foot Ruined Our Summer

So I've been dealing with plantar fasciitis in both of my feet for quite a while now but my right foot was by far the worst one.  I had tried to take care of it on my own for a couple years without much luck so I finally went to see a pediatrist.  He had me try an anti-inflammatory for a couple months but I still needed some help.  So the first week of June he gave me a cortisone shot in hopes it would relieve some of the problem.  Little did we know just how much of a problem I was about to get in.

The shot itself wasn't too bad.  It was a little sore the next day but then I thought I was doing ok.  About 10 days later, my ankle started tightening up and it felt like I sprained it.  I thought maybe I had changed the way I was walking because of the shot and had just made my ankle sore but then I started noticing a red mark that seemed to get bigger each day and it got to where I could hardly stand on it at all.  Two weeks after I got the shot, I was really hurting, my ankle was fevering and couldn't put weight on it at all.  It was a Monday and the day the boys started their basketball camp.  I was barely able to walk (or hobble really) into the building then waited for my dad to come by to drop off some crutches for me to use.  Up to that point, I had been rolling around my house on our office chair when I needed to go anywhere and my mom had brought down my grandma Singleton's walker that I had tried using a little bit so I was excited to have the crutches.

It was so swollen & the pic doesn't do the red color justice

I called the doctor before I left the camp to see if he'd see me.  I thought he'd be a little more concerned when I came in using crutches but he looked at it and said, yep it's infected...here's an antibiotic.  So I started on that that day but within two days a noticed a bump forming at the injection site.  I text a pic to the nurse at the doctors office and she called me right back and told me to come in as soon as I could to get it looked at.

The puss pocket forming at the injection site

I drove myself to the doctors office but with everything they had to do, Randy had to come pick me up.  The doctor lanced off the bump and drained the puss from inside.  He couldn't believe how much was in there.  He then did a saline rinse where he'd insert a syringe as far into the wound as he could and he'd shoot the saline through my foot.  I could feel it go clear through my foot.  He gave me an ankle block to numb my foot while he worked but I could feel the cold saline and the shot for the block hurt pretty bad.  It would "zing" my little toe.  It was a pretty intense pain to be honest and I have a pretty high pain tolerance.  I was glad Randy was with me through all of this.  He came every time which was every day for the next 10 days.

The doctor put me on two pill forms of antibiotics and I had an antibiotic shot each day I went in.  Each day he would do a saline rinse so he had to give me a nerve block every time just about the ankle.  After 10 days of doing this, I had a full circle of shot marks and I'm not going to lie, they hurt. :(  It would "zing" the nerve to my little toe every time and to this day, my little toe is a little numb.  The procedure itself hurt quite a bit too.  It would make my foot ache so bad.

This was how my foot looked for 6 weeks

My parents brought down my grandpa's wheelchair.  I still used the crutches occasionally but the wheelchair was a nice upgrade.  But I wasn't out of the woods just yet.  I still had to kick the infection.  The culture came back that I had a strep infection and it was nasty.  The Simkins Family Reunion was the last week of June up in Pine Valley and I honestly don't remember much of it.  I was running a high fever and wasn't doing good at all.  We got up to camp late afternoon on Friday and I remember trying to help with dinner while I sat in my wheelchair but I was so tired and out of it I don't remember much else.  Marsha told me she looked over at me at one point and I was just slumped over in the chair and she knew it was bad.  I do remember that after dinner was cleaned up, we got Randy, my dad, my brothers and brothers in law all together and they gave me a blessing.  I got a little emotional during it even though I was pretty out of it and don't remember what was all said.  Some of the kids still talk about being able to see all the guys do this for me and I'm so thankful for the power of the priesthood.  I know that that blessing is what got me through this ordeal because I was worse off than I realized.  My doctor told me he was really scared for me.  He called or text me every day for almost 2 weeks and even came in on the weekends and on the 4th of July to tend to me.

Grandma & grandpa let the kids stay with them while Randy took me home.  I called the doctor on the way and told him I had a 103 fever and he told me to take some pain pills and if it didn't come down under 101 in a couple hours to go to the ER.  I took the pills and went to bed and luckily it did come down.  I went in for another treatment the next morning and I felt a little better even though I had a low fever.  But I was able to go back up to Pine Valley to spend the day with the family.

I continued to improve little by little every day but I even had to take my wheelchair to Lagoon with us for the Ogden Family Reunion in the middle of July.  I was somewhat walking by that point but I knew there was no way I would make it trying to walk around all day so I gave in and took it.  My foot had been in the same relaxed position for so long that it took some time to get the movement back.  But I pretty much sat on the couch for 6 weeks and my poor kids and hubby had to help me with everything.  Things were starting to get back to normal by the time school started but the kids will never let me live it down that we pretty much did nothing over the summer and I ruined it for them.  I still feel really bad about it.  But good news is, I was off my foot long enough that the plantar fasciitis went away. :)  Now I just need to get rid of it in my other foot...but I'm a little worried about it so it might be a while before I try anything.