Mid foot fusion

Hello Silvia, I sympathise with you, although my "reconditioned" foot is only a year old.  I, too, have discomfort and some pain in my foot, especially at the end of the day, seems to be after sitting down to relax for the evening. I was to have my other foot done about now but I don't know whether to go ahead with it.  If I go purely on how it feels at the end of the day, I don't think I would go ahead.  It was such a daunting experience for me; I  had one shoulder replaced just months prior to the foot operation and will have to have the other one done in the not too distant future; so consequently I could not use crutches, nor would my knees allow me to kneel on them with the scooter I had purchased; consequently, I was wheelchair bound for seven weeks.  Is my unoperated foot destabilising the fixed one?  My new six year old knees are giving me trouble again, from my unstable gait, I suspect, as well as my arthritic spine giving me a great deal of pain, so I just don't know.whether to go ahead with another foot operation.  I rely on a large number of medications. This forum, I have found, has been invaluable for information, gained directly from the horse's mouth, so to speak.  As I sit here at my desk typing this, now, towards the end of the day, my operated foot is just as uncomfortable as the unoperated one, with pins and needles in my whole mid to front part of the feet; I didn't have anything done to my toes and all "claw" as I walk. So, as you can see, like you, I am totally undecided at the moment, whether or not to go ahead with another foot operation. 

Sylvia have they checked your plantar plate is not damaged or gone completely. I find out next week if that has happened to me. My surgeon was grim after two surgeries that I went to another’s hospital. He had left me with another problem and a toe sticking up. Surgeon knows what He needs to do  and n respect of the toe but something during his examination wanted an mri on the foot to check the plantar plate. I have pain in ball of foot and also the cramping at night. Might be worth asking. 

Hey there

I’m 45 not 60, but I had an injury to my big toe and heel. My MRI shows midfoot arthritis and I know my big toe has arthritis too.

My surgeon said they can fuse those bones, but what happens then is other parts of your foot have to compensate and in turn take the load of each walk.

With that said, your other foot bones are prob being overworked and that’s why your foot still hurts.

Also, if you ever had cortisone shots that could of degraded your soft tissue in addition to aging.

thanks for the warning, i am now 1 year down the line from my mid-foot fusion and i too have a toe that sits differently to pre operation.  Talking to my surgeon and others i've realised this an inevitable part and the toes are affected as part of the process - toes fine when on feet and walking, but achy and feel out of joint come evenings/night. I now shove my feet onto a hot water bottle or mini electric heat pad and that seems to help.  There are times when it feels like the pointed end of the screws are pressing into a nerve, but the MRI scan is not showing this so the pain must be something else pinching the nerve.

My fusion worked in as far as the bones have fused but the surgeon did inform me on the day of the op that the arthritis had already spread so gave me a choice over whether i stuck with steroid injections or have the op - and opted for the op which has sorted my morton's click, but another joint is now moving so I still need the steriod injections.  The latest one was so painful  i physically couldnt walk for 48 hours but is really helping now i am a few days down the line  

Now the one lesson i have learned is i can manage to get round my small and medium  sized supermarkets but a hypermarket is going to have conseques - i have a sedentary job so can cope with that, but a day out at a historic house and gardens, a museum or a stroll round the shops will mean not much sleep due to the pain that night and if i really overdue it, it can either take a few days for the pain to ease off, or its finished off the pain reduction from the last steriod injection, so you may need to readjust your expectations of what you can achieve, but please dont assume that things would have been hugely different if you had just continued with the injections - i have now had 6 inections, 4 pre op and 2 post op one worked for 24 hours only, one didnt work at all and 2 worked really well for 3-6 months and one partially worked for 2 months - i will see how long this latest one lasts for.  Now i had a long chat a few times with my consultant and his junior colleages and they put it to me very clearly that i was between a rock and a hard place - if i didnt have the op my foot would continue to deteriorate as the joints get worse and the arthritis spreads as i'd had 2 fractures and a dislocation which different hospital missed for 17 months -  or i have the op, now although this will put additional pressure on other areas so they may deteriorate faster than under normal pre injury circumstances it might give me a window of time before the foot is riddled with arthritis and the more i stress the foot the quicker this will happen.  

Therefore Silvia my best advice is go back to your surgeon and get it completely checked out - you need to know none of your screws fixings have moved, but also you need to check that the joints next to your fusion havent now deteriorated and are actually what's causing the pain and referred pain.  I know the steriod injections dont always work, but my experience is they're better than nothing but the more you have the less effective they will be - the other bit of info my surgeon told me was that the composite of the injection itself will accelerate the arthritis, which is why doctors dont like giving them unless they're really necessary or more and 2-4 per year - sorry to say this but there's no panacea cure-all - i am just crossing my toes that they'll get stem-cell surgery sorted and safe for general use sooner rather than later to reverse the arthritis, but so far it sounds like that could be a few generations away before they get it right!

regards

lorraine