Jason Lancaster

After being on crutches since the 20th of November, I came off yesterday and immediately found pain in the old area, a tender spot on the bottom of my foot. The side of my foot healed up in the 9 weeks I was off it, but they’ve said I have sesamoiditis and don’t expect that crutches are going to be of much help for the rest of my pain. Resting, ice, ibuprofen, and cortisone seem to be the solution for now.

They gave me a cortisone injection and sent me off to have a MRI performed. A followup appointment will be made in early February assuming nothing odd is found in the MRI.

I had a long struggle with tendinitis in my right elbow back in high school and don’t look forward to a similar struggle with the foot. I pretty much had to stop all activity that bothered it for years until it finally healed. This has been a real bummer for me; at least when it was my arm I could easily take it easy. The feet are a much harder thing to rest.

So it looks like the early part of this year will be spent continuing my one-footed, or at least mostly one-footed climbing. Once the tenderness of the cortisone shot goes down I’ll be able to spend some much needed time at the house finishing up the final projects in order to move in March 1st.

I found out on the 20th of November I fractured a sesamoid bone in my foot just behind my big toe. So, I’ve been on crutches since then and will be until January 1st. What a bummer. A lot of activities will be impacted including work, climbing, dancing, and even holiday travel plans.

On the bright side, I’ve had some major problems with that big toe joint, perhaps what is called sesamoiditis. At least I’ll be giving that some time to rest and heal. I hope in the new year I can cure some more of these aches and pains I’ve been having. Being off my foot for six weeks is a good start.

I’ve been stuck inside my house since Friday when I came down with some sort of cold/flu and a 102 degree fever. It hasn’t been too fun, but this is one of those times I’m very thankful I pay for cable and can get the Discovery Channel, since that is basically the only channel worth watching. They’ve been running through the Planet Earth series, which is really interesting. I wish I had a HD tv to really enjoy the quality of the video.

It sucks though, because I had a lot to do this weekend, including going to Elaina’s 30th birthday and seeing Dom and Jaimie’s new home. Adam called me earlier to let me know they were demo’ing a wall over at Dom and Jaimie’s. Too bad I couldn’t go over and help with the destruction of something that wasn’t mine!

Someone commented on my older tonsillectomy entry and it reminded me I should write a brief update on how everything turned out.

My tonsillectomy, adenoidectomy, and uvulectomy (uvulaectomy)

The picture taken a few days after my surgery still had a small portion of my uvula attached. After healing, I have no uvula left at all. I guess it was just swollen.

I don’t snore anymore, but I also can’t oink like a pig. I’ve had some issues with drinks and/or saliva going up my nose accidentally but I’m much more comfortable breathing (a good trade-off). I can’t gargle because it drips down the back of my throat. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to do that again. I’ve searched the internet for some answers but I guess people don’t like talking about gargling too much.

The day of surgery I felt great. Day after was another story. I bled for the first two weeks but after they cauterized the wounds bleeding stopped. It was extremely painful for the first 19 days. I took liquid hydrocodone every 3-4 hours on the dot. Needless to say I slept a lot. After the pain died down, regular old tylenol did the trick. It took me just over 3 weeks to eat normally. Yawning still hurts a little and my throat has a general sensation of being tight. Drinking water helps and I’m sure this will go away in time. I lost 12lbs, ate 4 boxes of jello, went through 2 boxes of Quaker apples and cinnamon oatmeal, and used about 38 ounces of liquid hydrocodone.