Progress

I'm making very good progress. I can now get around better without the crutches than with, although a walker would probably still be better -- safer, at least -- than either. Preparing simple food is easier because my balance has improved enormously: moving a plate from the oven to the counter is no longer a carefully launched near-fall with a sudden countertop grab at the end. I can do stairs upright. I can even wiggle my toes and flex my ankles a little. At this rate by Monday I'll be tap dancing.

I am about to attempt a shower. No getting a drop of water on either foot, no standing up. Ah, the comedic potential!

Nerve signals gone awry

The places I have the most pain are the places that used to be served by the excised nerve. I'll step wrong or hit my forefoot wrong or put some kind of pressure on it that it doesn't like, and I'll get cold electric spikes or a burning sting. I'll feel it on the dead sides of my toes, in the little dead area in the ball of my foot, or deep inside right about where I imagine the nerve bundle used to run.

Phantom pain. This must be phantom pain.

The nerve bundle's stump is being stimulated in unprecedented ways in its radically changed and still rapidly changing environment. Are there things that cause minor electrical variations at that spot? Would pressure stimulate it? In any case, the nerve is sending random meaningless signals. The brain is trying to make sense of the transmissions it receives, using the only decodings it has ever known. There's no way for the brain to distinguish this from real pain. It's receiving the "correct" electrical signals for real pain.

There are other weird things. Sometimes there's a sensation deep inside my foot right where I imagine the incision to have been -- a sensation of a cold wind going across it. Except that spot's on the inside and the foot is wrapped up as well. There are tingles. There's a very deep ache, particularly in the left foot. That one might be real; it's kind of diffuse and I can't tell whether it's inside the dead area.

Nearly a year ago, when I considered this surgery for the first time (and opted for an attempt to kill these nerve bundles by chemical injection instead), I asked about the possibility of phantom pain. I was told most people who have this surgery don't have phantom pain after oh, a month or two. I don't know why it would go away but I am heartened by the idea that such a thing is likely.

I'm fascinated. I'm also taking a new look at the enormity and permanence of what was done to these feet of mine on Thursday morning. Amputees have phantom pain! Not people like me! But we've cut some nerves, though, and it makes sense that I could have something similar. Minor, low-risk surgery this may be, and I still know it was my best hope and thus don't regret doing it, but it does have some sobering implications.