A whole week at home!!

It's now been a whole week since I was discharged from roehampton and it's been an interesting week of learning about how to live with this new prosthesis and I've made various observations.

1 - walking is hard
Whilst the progress I've made is incredible, walking is undeniably still a hard thing to do.  I'm pleased to say that my balance is good, walking will become easier (and is becoming easier - slowly but surely, I just have to remind myself of this fact), but with a five week old stump that is still a bit bruised and battered. It will get better but it will take time.

2 - my right foot is MASSIVE!
We discovered this whilst in Cotswolds.  I've been told with no doubt that I must keep the fake foot dry and so I thought I'd buy myself some decent boots that would help me to do just this! Whilst there my feet were measured by Steve (not sure he's measured a prosthetic foot before), but we discovered there is quite a difference in size. Not ideal!!
During my outpatients appointment I suggested we just amputate the toes on the prosthetic but instead a new foot has been ordered.  Hopefully I'll get it in the next week or so!

3 - my assumptions regarding socks were wrong...
I joked pre op that I would get through considerably less socks. Turns out I was wrong! I am currently wearing one sock on my biological foot which is pretty standard, but Im also wearing two thick socks, one thin sock and a think half sock on my stump, all of which is pretty standard by this time of Day! It's a lot of socks to deal with...  Getting the number of socks on the stump correct is a real and constant challenge.  its the key to getting a comfortable prosthesis And tiny adjustments make a huge difference. Learning to get this right is tricky, but I'm getting there!

4 - you have to make the physio happen!
It would be so incredibly easy to just stop the Physio/rehab activities when you get home after something like this.  I can walk a bit with sticks, I can get about (I'm back to driving - thank you DVLA) and so I literally have to remind myself what my goals are and what I hope to achieve!  By doing so I force myself to get up, to go to the gym, to do laps of the house or garden, just to keep moving forwards.  As  part of that progress today I challenged myself to walk all the way around the park (I'd taken poppy for a run around) with just one stick.  I was pleased with how it went but won't be getting rid of the stick for distances like that for quite a while.

And so there we go - progress continues and however slow it may feel, in reality I'm moving pretty quickly.
Happy days!