April’s Bunion Surgery Experience
Tips and Tricks for an easy-breezy bunion surgery experience 😜
(I did a Lapiplasty my right foot on 9/16/22 with Dr. Savard at Ochsner Kenner. This is my personal experience and tips on what worked or was helpful to know. I am not a doctor, please don’t mistake any of this for expert medical advice!)
Here’s a pretty awesome before/after x-ray, I’ll share pics of my foot throughout the healing process as well:
Prior to Surgery:
Dr. Savard sent me home from my pre-op appointment with a prescription for a knee scooter. I had one delivered and practiced with it for a few days before surgery. Specifically getting in and out of the bathroom can be tricky so best to experiment while you have two working feet!
The knee scooter is WONDERFUL but crutches are also handy to have if you are going somewhere for a quick lunch or meeting…getting that knee scooter in and out of a vehicle can be challenging and crutches are way more transportable. It’s good to have both if possible.
Note: Crutches are adjustable and come in different size ranges. For example, my giant of a husband has crutches but they do NOT adjust to be short enough for someone of average height like me. If you borrow from someone, make sure they work for your height!
I mentioned to the nurse before surgery that I had borrowed some crutches from a friend to have in addition to the knee scooter and she asked if I wanted to be fitted for my own and meet with someone to learn how to use them properly. I said yes and someone came into the room while I was recovering from surgery and helped me learn to use crutches.
I also borrowed a shower chair to use, for the first week post-op you cannot get your foot wet but I was able to sit in the shower chair and just hang my foot outside the shower.
You will need to see your primary care physician in the week or two before surgery to get cleared that you are healthy enough for the procedure AND do a pre-op with the hospital where they go over everything too. Seemed like overkill to me, but it is what it is. 🤨
Day of Surgery:
Other than the obvious (no jewelry, lotions, etc) wear loose fitting pants or shorts because your foot will be bandaged and unable to bend after surgery.
They do a nerve block for your leg so you will not feel anything from about the knee down. Then they use anesthesia similar (or the same as) what they do for a colonoscopy so you don’t have the nausea/other side effects like from regular anesthesia. You do lose short term memory for a little while after…for instance, I apparently asked my hubby what he had been doing while I was in surgery three consecutive times because I had completely forgotten that I’d already asked. It can be comical or annoying depending on how accommodating your partner is feeling in the moment. 😉
My surgery was first thing on a Friday morning, we arrived at the hospital for 5am, went into surgery around 7:30am, and were leaving the hospital before noon.
They will send you home with pain meds and antibiotics, in my case it was 800mg Ibuprofen and Oxycodone with Tylenol. You don’t need the pain meds right away because you have the nerve block, but I was told that taking the ibuprofen is a good idea regardless to help keep down inflammation.
Ice and elevate as much as possible, especially in the first 24 hours. Because of bandaging you can’t get ice directly to the area so they recommend you put ice behind your knee or upper thigh so that it cools the blood flowing to your foot…although that sounds weird it really helped and I found it to work well to relieve discomfort.
The nerve block can last anywhere from a few hours to a few days, so take a pain pill before you go to sleep that night in case the block wears off while you’re sleeping. You always want to stay ahead of the pain!
In my case, I woke up at 2am Saturday and felt tingling in my foot exactly like when you have a limb fall asleep from lack of blood flow and it starts to wake back up. Got a snack and a dose of pain meds and was good to go….until I had a bad reaction to the pain meds that landed me in the ER Saturday night. I’ll spare you the details but it wasn’t pretty.
The ER doctors sent me home with a prescription for Zofran which helps with nausea. They said I could take that with the pain meds but I was too shook from my experience to take any more pain meds….so I literally have only taken ibuprofen and tylenol for pain since the day after surgery.
Other than a few instances when I was bumped by our four-year-old or accidentally put my foot down to stabilize myself, it has not been super painful. I had heard horror stories from people but I would describe the experience as uncomfortable not excruciating.
One week post-op:
I went in to have the bandage removed and see what I’ve affectionately described as my “franken-foot”. It was swollen and bruised but otherwise looking good! They took x-rays to make sure everything was aligned correctly. Told me I could start putting weight on it in another week but no driving for another 3 weeks (because it’s my right foot).
Note: bring socks to your post-op, once they unbandaged my foot I didn’t have anything to wear on it! I hadn’t realized I would need a covering for my foot. Thankfully they had a compression sleeve that I wore.
Two weeks post-op:
I started putting weight on it a few days ago…just minimally while I was in the kitchen fixing dinner one night and then around the house the next day doing laundry/straightening up a bit. Today we went out to run a few errands and have lunch and I just took one crutch to help. It worked well! Because of swelling I only have two pair of shoes that fit comfortable at the moment, hopefully the swelling will continue to go down and I can add a few more pair to the rotation soon!
Stitches/incisions started to itch in the last few days and there is one stitch on the inside curve of my foot that really feels like it’s pinching sometimes. I wanted to do some lotion or neosporin to relieve that but needed to check with the surgeon’s office first. I spoke with three different people (the on-call nurse, the head nurse at surgeon’s office, and then a message from the surgeon himself) and got three different answers. Bottom line, they don’t want anything moist because that encourages bacteria growth. We compromised and they allowed me to do a thin layer of antibacterial ointment on the one area that’s pinching a few times a day. I’m also doing a water-based aloe spray a few times a day too that helps relive the itching sensation.
Three weeks post-op:
I thought that at this appointment my stitches would be removed. However, all the surgeon did was clip the extra sutures that were hanging out and told me they were dissolvable stitches. Don’t know why they made it seem like today would be significant because it was just to check on the progress of healing.
I did find out that apparently I wasn’t supposed to be in shoes yet when I started putting weight on it I was only supposed to be wearing the boot. OOPS! Thankfully no damage was done, but I’m back into the boot for another 6 weeks or so. YIKES!
You’ll see in a few of the pics that my incision to the far right on my foot is a little inflamed. Apparently I got too aggressive while trying to remove the purple markings and aggravated the sutures. I was prescribed some antibiotics just in case, but they didn’t help and the swollen/aggravation went away on its own after a few days.
I told him about the one area of my foot that is just absolutely annoying the 🔥out of me and he identified that that is where the screw went into my foot. It’s just a different type of hole than all the other incisions, so once the skin heals it should be fine. I asked if there was any way I could put numbing cream on it at least at night. He told me that I could do a lidocaine patch over my entire foot if I wanted to, for as long as I needed to, and now I am so relieved!! 🥳 Seriously wish I’d had that info a week ago though…🤨
Four weeks post-op:
Driving! I started a few days earlier and found that I had to adjust the position of my foot on the brake pedal but other than that it worked well! I’m also cleared to take a bath and let the foot soak now, so I’m looking forward to that!
Still waking in the middle of the night with pain from that one incision from the screw in the side of my foot. I fall asleep with ice on it and then sometime in the middle of the night wake up and put a lidocaine patch on it, usually end up sleeping in the chair in the living room for the rest of the night. Not sure what it is about laying flat in the bed but I cannot find a comfortable position for my foot right now. I know it will improve, but this is a lingering annoyance!
Notes for those doing this through/with the VA:
I have service connected disability rating for bi-lateral bunions. I was seen at the New Orleans VA podiatry clinic and they said that I needed to have surgery to correct the bunions. I had a recommendation from Dr. Savard that I get the lapiplasty procedure done and since the VA doesn’t perform lapiplasty they offered to put in a request for me to have the surgery through community care with the surgeon of my choice. Highly recommend going this route because in my conversation with the VA surgeon it was mentioned that they do not do many corrective surgeries, most of their work is amputation. 😳
I have put in a request for a temporary 100% disability rating during recovery from this surgery. It is standard practice for them to grant anywhere from 1-6 months of temporary 100% disability rating for surgeries or hospital stays that are related to a service connected disability HOWEVER you have to request it. #themoreyouknow
What’s Next:
As you can tell from the pics I definitely need to have the same surgery on my left foot. I specifically scheduled the right one first since I knew it would be tougher with not being able to drive. My surgeon recommends waiting about 6 months between surgeries so I’m hoping to schedule the left foot in March of 2023. I did request initially to do them both at the same time, but my surgeon said it’s always better to have at least one working foot if possible. I’ve spoken with a few people who did have both done at once and they said the same thing…they ended up crawling a good bit and that’s never fun!!
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