A bit more background

I thought I would use this post to share what my feet were like prior to the surgery. As I stated in my first post, I have had Rheumatoid Arthritis since the age of eight. It affects my feet, ankles, knees, elbows, wrists and hands. It has in the past also affected my neck and jaw to a lesser extent. The arthritis itself has been managed effectively with medication for many years now but I am left with limited range in most of the affected joints. I do sometimes experience pain but this is most often after I have exerted myself too much, for example by walking or standing for too long.

Recently, I have been experiencing pain as a result of the deformity in my forefeet. I began to develop bunions at around the age of fifteen and these have got progressively worse over the past fifteen years. In addition to this, my other toes have 'dropped'. I believe a more medically correct term is 'dropped metatarsal' and it means that the toe joint drops down so that it protrudes into the ball of the foot and you end up walking on it. This also leads to a build up of hard skin which adds to the pain. Shoes can be painful to wear and walking barefoot was extremely sore.

Probably the easiest way to fully represent my feet is to share some photographs.

In this photograph you can see the callouses on the bottom of my feet and also the way the toes are all lifting up and overlapping. A few years ago I started to see podiatrists to help remove the hard skin and this did help to relieve some of the pain. Unfortunately, I was unable to book repeat appoinments and had to call up the booking centre each time, which was frustrating and eventually I fell off their list. On a routine check up with the Rheumatology department, I mentioned that I would like another referral to podiatry to help with the problem and the consultant suggested that I could also be referred to surgery to try to provide a more long-term solution. I had asked about bunion surgery way back when I first developed bunions and was told at the time that it was extremely painful and only considered a 'last resort'. I said this to the consultant and she looked at me as if to say 'How much worse do you want them to get?!' I also reflected later that the original advice was given to a fifteen year old and it was also about fifteen years out of date! I agreed to the referral and so it began!

As you will see in the next two pictures, my toenails are very yellow and rather disgusting. I did have quite a lot of problems looking after my feet and had lots of problems with ingrowing toenails which is why I ended up letting them grow quite long. The vain part of me was considering Photoshopping the photos to make the nails look less yellow but I thought it was best to tell the whole, ugly, truth!!

Another shot of my feet.

This really shows the way
the toes had lifted.