Doing Away with Hallux Rigidus

     I have put away my hiking boots, and it's not because it's ski season, because I've put away my ski boots, too, and it's not because there's no snow. My favorite outdoor activities will be curtailed for a while as I carefully nurse my right foot back to pre-surgery—and I mean way pre-surgery—normality. I hope what I mean is back to what the foot was like before the hallux rigidus that set in forty years ago and finally drove me to surgery.

    Hallux rigidus means a "rigid big toe," and what that means is that the big toe joint doesn't bend (it's an arthritic condition), but, of course, in even normal walking and especially in skiing and hiking, the big toe wants to bend. But trying to bend hurts. How badly it can hurt can be ascertained from my blog post on the last day of hiking the Dolomites last September, where a 7,700-foot descent in a nine-and-a-half-hour day was causing a great deal of pain. My podiatrist friend, Monika, recommended surgery. "Diana," she said. "No more pain."

    The surgeon demurred. He said he wouldn't guarantee no more pain but that he would guarantee less pain, which sounded pretty good to me.

    Of course, at the moment, with surgery only two days behind me, I am in more, and more constant, pain, but that'll go away. I am staying with Monika for the first few days after surgery.

(What good luck that my podiatrist is a friend!) Tomorrow my son will come down from Washington to take me home and help me adjust to one-footed living at my mountain home. The doctor has fused the big toe of my right foot and put in a pin, so I am to be non-weight-bearing on that foot till the doctor tells me I can do otherwise. He says that recovery is generally twelve weeks. 

    All right, then—skiing on March 8. And then the hiking, and I am predicting a lot less pain. And if that's true, it'll be worth it to go through it all again on the left foot.