So the pressure of daily life got in the way of me blogging regularly.  Time for a massive update.

Over the past 6+ months I’ve had increasing foot pain mainly in my right foot. Two changes of orthodics since ankle surgery a year ago, things weren’t getting better.

Podiatrist wasn’t happy with my progress and sent me off for an x-ray & ultrasound. Scans revealed arthritis in both feet. Bone spurs and fragments and inflamed sessamoids in the right foot.

Podiatrist told me if things don’t get better I’m headed back to see my orthopedic surgeon. Given my experience of last year I went to my GP and ask for a referral. I wanted to have all my options in front of me.

GP was a bit taken a back that someone of my age would need to see an orthopedic again and remarked that it’s normally once and your done. So he said oh well go see James just like last time.

Surgeon was convinced he could help me but wanted an MRI to confirm. MRI really didn’t show anything we didn’t already know, just helped to clarify.

At the first consult there was only talk of a general tidy up. At the second consult it wasn’t that straight forward.

Anyhow the decision was to go in and remove both sesamoids in my right foot and clean up the spurs and fragments in my first MTPJ. In non medical terms, remove some small pea shaped bones in the ball of my foot and clean up the mess in the first toe joint.

As you’d expect careful consideration was taken in me signing up for more surgery. After the problems last yeah I was very apprehensive. It’s when you sign a form to operative treatment that you start to get flash backs to last time.

Last time for me wasn’t good, I knew that this time had to be better than last time.

Sure in the end I got a good result (for the ankle injury) it was a long hard earnt result.

This time around after weighing up the factors it was time to be decisive.

I’ve got a very understanding employer but even the most understanding managers do query when your looking at heading back to surgery so quickly. I needed to commit to a timeframe and I’m confident that unlike last time this will be fine.

I’ve not updated this blog in a while as I didn’t think appropriate to share my situation publicly until I knew exactly what was going on.

My orthopedic surgery is a really great guy, very experienced and skilled (just what you want in a surgeon!) He very clearly explains himself and that is always re-assuring.

Once a surgical path was decided many comments about “just like last time” came up. Both from the surgeon and his P.A., my GP made similar comments.

There really shouldn’t be “another time” when it comes to surgery, as I’ve explained to quite a few people surgery is a “when your out of non surgical options”  and we’d reached that point.

Unlike last time, I knew what my treatment options were early. I made a firm decision to go down one path. This was almost like last time as it was the same surgeon the only difference was he was and would be the only surgeon I would consult on the matter.

So that’s the path to surgery, I’m typing this entry of the first day home after coming out of hospital.

Further updates will come as I reflect.