Monday, 18 October 2010

Discombobulation

After a week's hiatus, occasioned by what seemed to be a recurrence of the gout that last plagued her in July, Jo's physiotherapy resumed today.

Late last week our GP paid Jo a home visit as the steroids used to treat the gout did not seem as efficacious as before. After a physical examination of both feet he determined that the bio-mechanics of Jo's feet had been affected by the prolonged inactivity and Jo would need the specialist attention of a podiatrist to rectify this.

The physiotherapist conducted a fairly thorough examination today and concluded that there is muscle and tendon distortion on both feet, caused by the afore-mentioned inactivity. In her right foot it is aggravated by an old injury dating from her childhood, a broken big toe. This makes her big toe point upwards and thus affects the balance from the instep to the ankle.

In her left foot the muscles and tendons on the left side are stretched and those on the right shortened. This is why her foot at rest and when standing tends to roll over onto the left side of her foot. The pain on the left is further aggravated by the neuropathic pain.

Rectifying both requires Jo to undergo considerable nausea-inducing pain as she force stretches the muscles and tendons in each foot. A splint on her left leg may help but there is no way of avoiding the pain.
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Different strokes...

It has been nearly seven years since Jo suffered a "controlled" stroke whilst undergoing brain surgery to clip the blood vessel that had caused a subarachnoid haemorrhage in 2000. Sadly two successive coilings did not occlude the bleed and so Jo had a craniotomy in August 2008. During surgery the surgeon discovered the coiling had penetrated the rear of the aneurysm, occasioning emergency repair procedures. Consequentially they spent one and a half hours longer in surgery than expected, leading to the right half of Jo's brain forgetting it has to look after the left side of her world.