Q: Was the surgery painful?
A: I could sugar coat this so as not to scare you, but in the interest of honest reporting, I’ll admit that the experience was extreme. I had about 6 months to wrap up my life between scheduling the surgery and the actual procedure and in that time, the unknown of it all was so damaging to my psyche. The anxiety was intense and, as a person who mentally runs every possible outcome for all situations, I tried to prepare myself for all the worst case scenarios. I hoped it couldn’t possibly be as bad as I was building up in my mind but truly, it was worse than I ever could have imagined.
Several weeks post-op, still extremely swollen with a cumulative total of 20~ deep incisions.
I want to stress up front that my hospital experience was unusually traumatic for the pre-pandemic era and the experience caused me to develop PTSD that I am still working through to this day. I’m going to skip over the more traumatizing parts that were (hopefully) specific to that hospital* and instead focus on more general things you may expect when getting a rotational osteotomy.
* None of it was my specific surgeon’s fault but a word of warning to the Californians out there, please get a second opinion elsewhere before agreeing to get a procedure like this at Loma Linda. I regret it to this day.
Short answer is yes, of course the surgery is painful—especially since I did all four segments at once. It wasn’t just the expected pain of six simultaneous broken bones, but the tissue trauma that comes with repositioning everything inside your legs. All of the muscles and tendons shift position when they rotate the bones so everything was very, very swollen for a couple of months. I found the relentless swelling to be the most painful part. I also did not expect the eerie and indescribable feeling of my brain not being able to find my legs. It took probably two weeks with intensive, thrice-weekly physical therapy plus my family doing constant exercises with me at home before my brain was able to remap where the muscles and tendons had disappeared to and be able to even wiggle my toes (think that scene in Kill Bill v.1).
Q: What was the hospital experience like?
A: I was in the hospital for six days with a heavy cocktail of painkillers in both pill and IV form, as well as a misplaced epidural. No one warned me ahead of time that the hospital’s physical therapist would make me walk on my six broken bones the day after surgery. They were technically weight bearing thanks to the metal rods through the center of the bones, but the pain was blinding. I blacked out the first time they made me stand. (Note: My surgeon was horrified when he learned at the post-op that they had done this, so that leads me to believe it’s not a standard part of aftercare. I’m including it just in case that’s something you need to be prepared for.)
Q: Did you have to wear casts? What was aftercare like?
I did not have casts, just tightly wrapped ace bandages from toe to hip. I know some people require external metal cages called fixators, but I did not and I’m not sure what necessitates those.
This photo is from a follow-up surgery in 2017, but the left leg ace bandage situation is the same.