Patient Recovery Experience with Charcot Foot Treatment

“Christmas Eve, I actually woke up and my foot was swollen about two times its normal size. It was very painful to walk and the ankle and just the foot itself. I went to a podiatrist in San Antonio and he determined it was Charcot foot, which, as I’m told it’s a deterioration of the bone or the blood rushing through and deteriorating the bone. I had a lot of ankle pain and a lot of foot pain – it was very painful to walk – and swelling all up to almost my knee on my leg area, as well as the foot itself. I went to the podiatrist in San Antonio for about three months and he just told me to take it easy, stay off the foot as much as I could, and he gave me a CAM walker. I did that and the swelling continued, so I went to a podiatrist in Austin, thinking with all of the technology that Austin may have that they would have something – same thing. Walker, and stay off the foot as much as I could. We still had the swelling, still had the same problem.

Then I end up here, after going to speak with my pain management doctor because of the neuropathy in my feet, because I do have diabetes. He suggested that I come see Dr. Silvester for the treatment of the neuropathy because he had a treatment for that that he was working on. Dr. Silvester looked at my foot and he saw that the bones were collapsed in the bottom of my foot which had a big bump in the bottom of my foot. There was a lot of pain in my ankle – still when I walked I was limping because the pain level at that point was probably about an 8-9 every day. Then Dr. Silvester decided that we needed to do surgery to try to get the bones back into alignment and the ankle back into alignment. So he did an Achilles tendon lengthening and put some hardware in my foot. I look like a piece of sheet rock! I do! But, I have to say, since I listened to Dr. Silvester, that I did not have the pain – my pain level at the most was a 3 or 4 after the surgery and I kept it elevated, like I was supposed to. I came back, the incisions are healing beautifully. Being diabetic, I have to watch everything that I do, but the incisions are healing like they’re supposed to. I haven’t had any movement of the hardware, because I am doing exactly what he tells me to do, which is stay off of it, use my knee walker, and the swelling in my leg is completely gone. My foot, I still have a little bit of swelling, but that’s going to happen because of the fact that I have to continue keeping it elevated after surgery, but as far as pain, I have no pain anymore! But, I’m also not allowed to put pressure on it for at least another four or five weeks. Not having the pain level right now that i had at that point, or the swelling, to me is just a fantabulous job.”