Dear brothers and sisters,
One week ago in the evening (Tuesday 23/6/2020) I experienced severe pain in my ankle. I was unable to walk. After speaking to my doctor I took high doses of ibuprofen and had ice on my ankle nearly day and night to relieve the pain. This only helped a little for the first four days. Then on Sunday I tried to walk a bit with a stick but suffered much pain that night and felt as though I had a fever in my whole leg and then throughout my whole body.
God was gracious and gave me an appointment with my doctor yesterday (Tuesday 30/6/2020). I’m the one who choose to wait a week to have the initial appointment with my doctor because I have a long-standing problem with my ankle and I wanted to be sure it was serious. It is serious. It is not getting better if I use it at all. So I felt it warranted further investigation, and the doctor agreed.
My preference was to be able to go to the hospital near our apartment. My doctor tried but they were booked up with a backlog from the coronavirus time, so there were no available MRI appointments until 2021. So the doctor called Vilvoorde Hospital and they also said it would be a couple of months. But as I was praying, the lady on the phone said they had just had a cancellation and I could come in for an MRI on Tuesday (7/7/2020). That was a small miracle. Then the doctor called a orthopaedic foot (ankle) specialist in Leuven for an appointment to review the MRI that is to be done next week, and they were able to give me an appointment for Thursday 9 July. So my doctor said I should call her on the 8th of July between the two appointments. God is good and just one week after the incident with my ankle I’m getting seen and cared for.
Normally the MRI appointments take time because these machines are in high demand. It is a real blessing to be seen so quickly.
Please pray for wisdom to know what to do next. Two years ago a surgeon had suggested a radical surgery which included breaking my leg, cutting out most of my right ankle bone, the tarsus and place a prosthesis. This is a seldom-done operation with low odds of success. The surgeon warned that I could still have pain and not be able to walk normally. In Genk my doctor had advised that if I could bear the pain, I should postpone an operation as long as I could.
But the growth of bone in the joint doubled in size between 2016 and 2018. So it is likely to have finally completely protruded through the ankle joint. We shall see.
Such a surgery would have a long recovery time with quite a bit of physiotherapy time. Not really what I was planning for my schedule.
Please pray with us for wisdom.
Zendings Bode 