Feelin' Good

I did it!  I had the surgery and the evil is now out of my foot!  The surgery was Thursday.  They put me to sleep and gave me a local anesthetic for my foot and about an hour and a half later this is what it looked like:

So I have yet to see the actual incision (though I can feel it somewhat and I think it's fairly long).  When I woke up I asked to see just what he'd taken out and it looked like a couple of shrimp (sorry if that's TMI!)  He said the tissue surrounding the joint capsule (my big toe joint) was 5 times the size of normal but they won't be sure exactly why or what it is until it comes back from pathology in a couple of weeks.  Thursday and yesterday I felt a bit crazy due to all the medication and anesthesia wearing off but today I feel great!  Prior to the surgery my foot hurt pretty much all the time but I would get big shooting pains whenever I took a deep breath (weird I know!  And not such a good thing for someone who demonstrates proper breathing all day long:).  Since the surgery, every time I take a deep breath I brace myself for that shooting pain and IT'S JUST NOT THERE ANYMORE!  WOO HOO and praise GOD!  I'm also sleeping soooooo much better than I have in ages...despite the gigantic boot.  God is just so good and, though it all has to be spent in a chair or in bed still, I have more energy today than I've had in like 6 months.  Whew...I am not an 85 year old man like I'd feared.  

In other, cuter news Molly is really flourishing now!  She's been surrounded by some serious lovin' lately--first my parents last week during the ice and cancelled surgery time and now by Ryan's parents this week during his birthday and real surgery time.  Today marks the second week since we've been out of the hospital and she's healing remarkably well.  Since her tubes came out Tuesday she's gotten perkier and perkier by the day.  She now crawls on her hands and knees almost exclusively and rarely reverts back to her spica belly crawl.  She is also pulling up on some furniture, mainly our orange end table as it's the perfect height for her to get enough leverage to get all the way up without help.  Her verbal skills are through the roof at this point.  She can say the alphabet, count to 20 and beyond, identify all 26 letters (capital ones) and 10 numbers, she can finish the phrases in all her rhyming books, she sings along with many different songs, she can spell her name and recognize her name, and boy does she know her Sesame Street characters!!!  Here's a pic of her incision site on Tuesday after the tubes came out:

The red side of the incision is where the two tubes were exiting her body and on the other end you can see the knot on the end of the dissolvable stitches.

I feel like it's going to be a good year:)  Thank you everyone for your prayers!  Please continue to pray for my recovery, that it be quick and full!