On Jan 25th Mia Rose had another appointment with the surgeon when we were supposed to pick up her orthotics, but they had not arrived yet.
Her surgeon twisted, bent and poked at her foot even more intensely that two weeks before and again she had no pain at all (sat completely relaxed as he manipulated it), which elicited the remark “amazing” from him…he said it more to himself than to us, but clearly feeling so good and moving so well 10 weeks post surgery is not typical. He then told us we could schedule surgery to remove the screws in 2-3 weeks. We scheduled that for February 16th (exactly 13 weeks after the initial ORIF surgery).
On January 26th her surgeon’s assistant was very kind to bring her orthotics to us, since he lives in our area while the surgeon’s office is nearly an hour from our house. He put the orthotics in her sneakers and said that she should gradually break them in starting with one hour and increasing each day. Here’s a VIDEO of her first steps in a sneaker since the injury on November 9th.
VIDEO: Working her switch leap was the first thing she wanted to do when she got into her shoes…since she takes off and lands on her uninjured foot she was able to do it without a problem.
Although she still has a limp, she’s comfortable in the sneakers and so happy to be moving away from the boot. We’re looking forward to seeing her PT tomorrow.
A Gymnast's Lisfranc Recovery Journey 
It’s awesome to hear that Mia Rose is making a great recovery! 🙂 I am 16 and also currently recovering from a Lisfranc injury very similar to hers and have three screws in my left foot. At the end of the week I will be able to transition from my cast to a boot and hopefully gradually start to weight bear again! I was wondering when Mia Rose was able to put down her foot for long periods of time as my foot still has minimal swelling and turns a little darker when not elevated making it really uncomfortable? Also, has she ever felt that the vertical screw is restricting her big toe from bending forward fully? I look forward to see how she progresses and wish a swift and full recovery for both of us 🙂
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Hi Zoe. I’m sorry to hear that you are going through this injury too! Your injuries do sound very similar (and the xray you posted looks similar to hers too. Mia Rose is recovering very well, she’s just extremely frustrated by how long the healing process takes. Her foot did swell a bit and get discolored when she had it down for quite a while after surgery…I will ask her if she remembers when that stopped. She’s now 10.5 weeks post surgery and hasn’t complained about that lately. She definitely had restricted movement in her big toe initially that seemed like it could be from the screw, but that is almost completely gone after a month of PT. Since she’s a gymnast, getting back the ability to point her toes was important to her. Her left now points as much as her right, though not quite as much as before the injury, but it seems to still be improving bit by bit and her PT says that it should improve even more once the screws come out. (On February 16th.) I just read your blog and it looks like you had your surgery 6 weeks after Mia Rose had hers. I also noticed that you must not be in the US since you noted that being kept at the hospital overnight is standard where you are. Here in the US the surgery is an outpatient procedure so we arrived at the hospital the morning of her surgery and took her home a few hours after it was finished. Hope that you continue to recover well!
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That’s great news! Although the road to full recovery is long, I guess we can be thankful that it’s not something worse and that we are both young which should work out in our favor. I live New Zealand and the nurses who looked after me were great! Mostly they just took my blood pressure once every few hours and asked how my foot was feeling 🙂 Hopefully when I start PT my big toe can start to bend more as well. Right now I can move/wriggle my other toes pretty good. I heard that doing it often helps with the circulation and healing process? I was thinking, was it hard for Mia Rose to start 100% weight bearing in the boot and did it hurt at all? Reading Mia Rose’s positive progress has given me more hope that I too can have a good recovery journey. I was a bit down when the Lisfranc stories online were mostly negative experiences. Any other general advice would also be much appreciated, thank you!
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Mia Rose’s doctor told her that she should be wiggling her toes as much as possible to help with healing. So I think you are on the right track there. She didn’t have any pain when she started weight bearing in the boot so she went from testing it out to 100% very quickly. Her doctor told her that she should expect some pain and should let that be her guide as to how much she did how quickly. From what I’ve read, most people have some increase in pain and swelling initially with weight bearing, but she was very fortunate that it really didn’t hurt and she found that the more she walked in the boot the better the swelling got. Her PT said that it is pretty normal to see inflammation improve with more activity. I think that the fact that Mia Rose was very active even when she was totally non weight bearing helped to keep circulation going which likely helped with healing. I think you are right that being young is definitely in your favor. I completely understand how down you were feeling…most of the stories online are enough to give you nightmares. I told her not to read anything online because everything I found was so negative. I’m glad that Mia Rose’s progress so far is helping to give you more hope…that’s exactly why I started blogging. I want others to know that a positive recovery is possible. Hopefully in a few months both of you will be sharing great success with the world so that others will know that there is hope for a full recovery. In addition to keeping active, we made sure that Mia Rose ate lots of protein to help with recovery and she has been taking a few supplements that appeared to have a decent chance of helping with healing. She takes vitamin D, Vitamin K2 (helps the body to use the D), zinc (to help with wound healing), and SAMe the full name is S-adenosyl methionine (since some studies show that it can help with cartilage healing and it reduces inflammation). I can’t say for sure if any of these helped, but there was enough research to support the value of using them that it was worth it to us. My best advice is to try to stay positive and as active as you can within the limitations that your doctor gives you. Feel free to reach out any time. I’ve been sharing your messages with Mia Rose and she’s been helping me to respond.
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Incredible story on the road to recovery! When using the ARP what settings (protocol) was using in the treatments? What specific setting on the one to reduce the swelling? Thanks!
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Thank you, Larry. Our therapist at ARP provided the protocols to so at home. Initially she was using the “background duty cycle” 0/20 and she slept with it on that setting every night for 6 weeks because it helped with both swelling and pain. During her daytime sessions she had it on rhe 20/20 duty cycle doing exercises with the system running. Oir therapist at ARP was critical in guiding us through finding where she needed place the electrodes and what exercises she meeded to do.
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