Cheers to Getting Better

Thank God everything in life passes...and I am sooo thankful that the excruciating pain I felt a couple of weeks ago is gone. My old pains are back and I can't tell you how happy I am to be just having my regular pains...LOL. Sometimes life really puts things in perspective for you!!!

It has been 3 months since my surgery now and I continue to reach milestones...like dusting off my car (literally) and going for a ride. My car sat for so long that a spider decided to keep it company and build its home there!

In honor of my 3 months, John and I went to celebrate by having lunch at Olive Garden...OH MY! How I missed their food!!!!!!!!! To say I pigged out is an understatement. After our wonderful lunch, we went shoe shopping because I am tired of wearing the same pair of sneakers every day. I asked one of the shoe store employees to give me one of those foot measuring things so I could figure out my shoe size once and for all. Well....my shock wasn't to find out my NEW shoe size, it was to find out how little my original feet really became.

In high school, I used to wear a 6.5. Well, this weekend we found out, my right foot is a size THREE!!!!!!!!! 3...TRES...III...TROIS...TRE!!! Isn't that a child's size? No wonder shoe shopping has always been a dreaded event for me...and my new shoe size is a 6, which is nice, it's average. It should be easier for me to find shoes from now on and I left the store with a new pair of sneakers :)

Having surgery and recovering during the summer is definitely not one of the easiest things...I am constantly icing my foot to keep the swelling down, it's so hard to match my cute summer outfits with sneakers or my boot, I am definitely not wearing flip flops outside in this heat...but on the upside it's one summer of my life. And I'm hoping by next summer I have two pretty new feet to flaunt.

So...to celebrate that my funky mood is gone and that I am walking and that life is good and 3 months went by quickly and my next surgery is on the horizon and the excruciating pains are gone and my new size 6 foot and that I'm lucky to be alive...cheers to getting better!

Sometimes You're Up and Sometimes You're Down....

This has been an amazing week, while also awful at the same time. We traveled to Newport, RI for the 4th of July with two of our favorite couples. It was just a 3-day getaway, where we saw beautiful places, laughed til we cried, and just had a fantastic time. We brought my wheelchair so I could be rolled around the entire time and not take away from our day trips. Thank God for John who pushed me all weekend, even getting calluses on his hands....I don't know what I would do without you. My foot felt great and I was able to walk around a little bit and get up to take pictures.

Unfortunately, as the rest of my body felt great and happy, my legs reminded me CMT doesn't take time off. It was difficult to fall asleep and I tossed and turned in bed all night, waking up in the morning crying. It felt like the pain in my thighs reached new heights, getting ready to test me again. Now that I have been used to my old friends, they've decided to up the ante and see how much more I can take. Thankful for the support, I got in the shower, took a pain med and went out. I wasn't about to let CMT ruin my fun getaway.

Thankfully the super-meds helped me throughout the rest of the weekend, but it left me very thoughtful and honestly, sad. This was such a simple trip where I got wheeled around 99% of the time and my thighs were so painful (on a scale of 1 to 10, I'd say 11), that it made me wonder if I'll be able to take some of my dream vacations. Will I ever be able to go to Italy and walk the cobblestone streets? What about Greece? All these beautiful European countries I want to see with my own eyes, where so much walking is involved. And obviously once you open the can of worms, only worms come out...what about having a family? Will I be able to keep up with a kid?

And if it wasn't for the thinking alone, but the pain has persisted, even after we came home. Sure, the first couple of days I blamed PMS (it normally gets worse with PMS)...but it's Friday and I'm still having trouble sleeping because my body is so uncomfortable. So it's just been a little bit of a sad week for me, not mostly sad because of the thinking, mostly sad because I am hurting and there's nothing I can do about it.

But I am not a sad person, so I am allowing myself these few days that I'm more emotional than usual (thanks to PMS) and just crying my tears and starting to feel better. And today I am back to me again. But I do think I need to adjust my thinking and prepare myself if this new pain decides to stay so I can just accept it and move on with my life.

Even through the bad, I am appreciating the good. This week I am walking with no help, I am just walking. The swelling has gone down a lot and my foot is looking a lot more normal. And I've tested the waters by taking a few steps barefoot on my hardwood floors and guess what? No callus pain on my left foot...which is so strange. I can't even remember the last time I had no pain when I stepped down. Step with the right foot, there are my calluses and they hurt. Step with the left...nothing! I guess this is what people with normal feet feel like all the time. I can't wait to have no callus pain at all.