It’s been about six months since I started physical therapy in June. I have finally accepted that it might take me the whole year, or even longer, to get to where I want to be.

The pain during exercise is still worse than before surgery. But the pain while plain walking is less than before surgery. I still wear only my MBT shoes when I am active.

One sign of improvement is that I can wear my Dansko clogs and my snow boots for short periods of time. My feet ache afterward, but prior to surgery I couldn’t wear those shoes for even a minute without acute pain.

I’m still diligent about my physical therapy. I keep track of my exercises everyday. I do yoga or tap on MWF and hit PT hard afterward. TTh I do PT only, and weekends I do just 1 or 2 sessions. I used to go hard every day, but my therapist agreed it wasn’t sustainable. Before I ran out of sessions with her in August, I worked out this alternating pattern. Never a day off, but some days have more rest. (Actually, Thanksgiving day was the first day I skipped PT entirely! But I was on my feet cooking all day, so it wasn’t super restful 😅 )

Adding yoga was a no-brainer. It’s gentle on the joints. The stretching helps balance all the strengthening exercises I do in PT. I decided to add tap classes online because I missed dancing. I tried doing remote Zumba classes over the summer and it was an empty echo of the classes I used to attend. I think if the gyms were still safe and open I would have jumped back into my old classes and limped along. But all alone with a screen in my kitchen, with aching feet and no smiles to share, it was disheartening.

This fall I embraced a new physical therapy attitude – Do It Now. To reach my activity goals I need to practice them now. First, I incorporated the pique step, which I haven’t been able to do for 4 years. I still can’t. But I’m getting closer. I can pique to retire, instead of only coupe. Sometimes I can do a few without a barre assist, but either the pain or the bad balance (from not being up high on my joint) takes me down.

Then I started looking for free tap classes on youtube. I fulfilled a dream to learn tap in 2014, and if I had time and money I would attend more classes. Tap is super hard on my joints. It’s literally pounding my joints into the floor. It’s balancing all my weight on the ball of my foot. It’s about control of feet articulation. It’s everything I DON’T want to do with my feet. But I realized there’s no finish line to recovery where I will suddenly be able to tap easily, so I might as well start now.

At first it was so painful to wear the shoes with short heels and do basic flaps and shuffles. My first attempt was only 6 minutes of an online class. Now I can go a full hour! I’m pretty terrible, and it still hurts like the dickens. But I’m proud of my progress and I look forward to tap class days. (I LOATHE yoga. I only do it because it makes me feel good later.)

I’ve been taking photos to track my progress. At first I took them every week, but after the first few weeks post-op progress slowed down and it was bumming me out. Now I take them at the start of each month. It’s easier for me to see slight changes.

I think I finally turned the corner and have more flexibility than I did pre-op. Let me point out that prior to surgery I had been working my feet really hard for 6 months. This photo shoot was the MOST flexible I had been for a couple years. If I had taken photos at other times, my heels would barely be a half inch off the floor. So these pre-photos are the best I’d achieved with my own efforts.

Before surgery my right foot was more restricted. The unevenness drove me crazy! You can see the difference in this parallel releve:

After surgery my right foot recovery has been steady. But my left foot has been problematic. It has a sliding joint that clicks, it’s much more painful to put weight on the joint, and the flexibility seems more prone to “good days and bad days.”

I’m really grinding in every photo and holding onto the counter. So the height and strength shown isn’t sustainable. But I’m getting there!

Purple tights are from the day before surgery, May 10. Red sweats are from my first day of physical therapy, June 1. Green tights are from this morning, Dec 2.

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Hopefully in another 6 months I’ll have a higher releve and a decent pique, maybe even a pique turn? Shoot, while I’m dreaming big, let’s pretend the vaccines roll out widely and the dance classes are safe to attend again!