Complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) is a form of chronic pain that usually affects an arm or a leg. CRPS typically develops after an injury, a surgery, a stroke or a heart attack. The pain is out of proportion to the severity of the initial injury.

Complex Regional Pain Syndrome
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/complex-regional-pain-syndrome/symptoms-causes/syc-20371151

January 4, 2018. That is the day that my life changed drastically forever. On that morning, I put my trust and faith in to a foot surgeon that said he was “going to fix my flat foot pain.” The plan was to do a subtalar joint fusion of the right foot/ankle to correct my flat foot and the pain that was associated with it. This would be my fifth foot surgery. The previous surgeries were all done on my left foot/ankle which was 100% pain free by now thanks to a different surgeon at a different hospital that my insurance I had in 2018 wouldn’t cover.

The reason we chose this drastic course of action was because in the surgeon’s opinion, it would be the only surgery I would need on the right foot/ankle for at least several years as the goal of the fusion would be to prevent the joint from moving and create a more sturdy joint overall.

When I awoke from the surgery that January afternoon, I instantly knew something was wrong. I was in so much pain. More pain than I had ever experienced in my entire life. My gut instincts kicked in and I just knew right away that something was off and it wasn’t good.

I spent the night in the hospital for pain control and was sent home the next day in the worst pain of my life. The 10mg of Oxycodone would hardly even touch that pain. As days turned to weeks and my recovery progressed, I still knew something was wrong and each time I would tell the surgeon, he would thing I was exaggerating and just looking for pain med.

At my 8 week post-op appointment, he cleared me to start walking with partial weight bearing while having a cam walker boot on and using crutches. It took me a very long time to even be able to put any amount of weight down on my foot. And this being my 5th foot surgery all together, I knew this wasn’t right. It was excruciating. Imagine walking on glass and legos all while your foot is on fire while having rubbing alcohol poured onto it. That is what I felt.

At my next appointment (11 week post-op, I think) the surgeon refused to prescribe me any more pain medication despite me bawling with every step. Even if something grazed my foot, it would send me into a tizzy. I begged the surgeon to do a CT scan but he refused. It would be at that point that I sought out a second opinion.

I reached out to my podiatrist who I have known since I was a toddler. Right away, he did a CT on me and within 6 hours, I received a call that would confirm what I knew all along in my gut. There was something wrong. Not only did I have broken hardware (both screws), my ankle was not anywhere near being fused. I had been walking on an non-unionized ankle that had 2 broken screws in it as well. Within a week, I found myself sitting in a new surgeon’s office in a different clinic and was told I would need more surgery to try to fix all that had gone wrong with the first surgery. The new surgeon didn’t make any promises that he would be able to fix anything. My ankle on the inside was a complete disaster. This new surgeon also warned me that another surgery may make things worse rather than better as once a fusion has failed, a subsequent fusion in the same joint is also likely to fail.

So, on October 4th, 2018 I underwent my first revision surgery to try to re-fuse my right subtalar joint. When I woke up from that surgery, the surgeon told me he tried his best but that at the end of the day, it was a very difficult surgery and he wasn’t sure what my prognosis would be.

By December 2018, we knew that this second surgery would ultimately be another failed fusion. I tried a bone stimulation device to try to get the bones to fuse together even. It just didn’t work. And it was at that point I was also diagnosed with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome of the right foot/ankle as a direct result of the first surgery, the surgeon and his negligence.

Some days are better than others but there is always very intense pain that not even the strongest of narcotics touch.