Pain after foot surgery

[Anonymous]

I had foot surgery about 8 weeks ago. It was a pretty involved surgery with bones & tendons moved, screws etc. I'm now in a boot and doing PT. The issue is that the pain is just nonstop. I can ice it to calm it down a bit, but I can only leave the ice on for so long. Positioning doesn't matter. It just burns and throbs. They tried to give me something that treats nerve pain, but I couldn't tolerate the medicine (which didn't seem to help) and had to come off of it.

If you've had foot surgery, can you give me an idea of how long it took for the pain to go away? The surgeon says it will go away, he just can't predict when. It would really help to just have a goal in mind to make things a little more bearable.

[Anonymous]

I had that same kind of pain after my foot surgery and when I went in for followup, it turned out the post op bandages were wrapped too tightly. Once they redid that, the pain went away. Obviously not your case, but I found that no medicine (gabapentin, oxy) helped at all and I was miserable. 8 weeks would be torture, I'm sorry.

[Anonymous]

I only had a bunionectomy and it took a year for my foot to be pain free.

[Anonymous]

Go to pain clinic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I only had a bunionectomy and it took a year for my foot to be pain free.

Oh wow. This is OP. Thank you for telling me. If this takes a year, I may pull out all of my hair.

[Anonymous]

Elevate your foot above your heart

[Anonymous]

Podiatrist said there are so many nerves in your feet; it's excruciating when they give you a shot just to numb your feet for in-office procedures. Follow up with Pain Management Dept. of the Hospital -- it's their job to make sure no one is in pain/suffering.

[Anonymous]

Try this:

2 650mg Tylenol, the kind for arthritis, every 8 hours. You can do this for a couple of weeks, no problem. If it doesn't work, add Aleve every 12 hours. It may break the pain cycle long enough that you can then go off all of it after a week

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Try this:

2 650mg Tylenol, the kind for arthritis, every 8 hours. You can do this for a couple of weeks, no problem. If it doesn't work, add Aleve every 12 hours. It may break the pain cycle long enough that you can then go off all of it after a week

This.

I had a similar sounding foot surgery when I was a teenager and it was the most painful experience I’ve ever had.

[Anonymous]

I had foot surgery and the pain was awful. Like it was so miserable. I feel for you. I agree that a combo of Tylenol and Motrin worked better than any of the narcotics. It was at least 12 weeks before I felt less pain and 6 months before it was gone. I did PT and all the things they recommended but it was a tough recovery.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I only had a bunionectomy and it took a year for my foot to be pain free.

Oh wow. This is OP. Thank you for telling me. If this takes a year, I may pull out all of my hair.

And thanks for telling me bc I was considering getting the surgery but now i'm going to think twice about it because my pain is very much tolerable now. Would hate to have an extended period of serious pain!

[Anonymous]

2 years for me. And it will never be the same. That's just life, I broke my foot. I did PT and acupuncture, both really helped

[Anonymous]

I’ll start by saying that I was surprised by how painful it was during the initial stages. The first 3-4 days were the worst and then it slowly turned to tolerable. But the recovery on the whole wasn’t linear and there were some days I can even tell you why it seemed to hurt more. PT helped a lot and I don’t think I’d have the range of motion I do now without it. After about 3-4 months I noticed it less and then I’d say I felt mostly normal at 6 months. My surgery was in early October and I ran the Cherry Blossom 10-miler in the spring. It was a process and, at first, I questioned my decision (bunion), but looking back I have no regrets and a couple years out I am soooooo glad I did it!

[Anonymous]

I was eventually glad I did it but I don't think I was prepared for the pain or recovery. My doctor talked about walking out of the surgical center and I couldn't walk for a month. It really was a disservice to me and I told him that. He said people don't want to hear the bad side and he did have one patient be able to walk out of the surgical center.

OP- be easy on yourself. It is miserable but it eventually gets better.

[Anonymous]

OP here, thank you all for the encouragement and for sharing experiences! I guess I knew that the beginning would be painful, but I didn't expect it to be this bad for this long. Thank goodness today is a better day that yesterday. The PP who said that their recovery wasn't linear and some days would just randomly be bad was right!