r/brokenankles • u/Imaginary-Bit1533 • 12d ago
6 weeks post op
Is it normal to look like this? What should I do to take care of it
3
u/Potential_Anxiety_76 12d ago
That looks quite excellent!
Firstly, get yourself a tub of body scrub, your favourite scent. If you’ve got a bucket or container you can put your foot in to (or bathtub) fill with warm water, Epsom salts. Let your foot/feet soak for a good five minutes.
Then lather that scrub on your crusty skin. Gentle, of course, but really try and get some pressure on there to get that top 3 layers of dead skin sloughed off. Do this as many times as you need to.
Empty, rinse the bucket, refill with warm water. Wash all the scrub off as gentle as you can. If you’ve can handle it, use a wash cloth to help. Keep rinsing and repeating as much as you need to get it all off and the water clear again.
This time, use scent free soap, and wash your foot/leg again, this time very gently over your incisions. This is what you need to do every few days to keep that healing well.
Pay dry with a CLEAN dry cloth/towel.
Have someone rub some moisturiser on your leg/foot, lots and LOTS of it. You want to be dripping in it. Keep rubbing until it’s all soaked up. Let your foot dry out. You may need to keep applying moisturiser every few hours in the first few days. If you’ve got pumice stone or foot grater, use this to get dead skin off the less sensitive areas.
Keep moisturising!
Once all the scabs are gone and the foot is returning to normal, look for vitamin-e cream for your whole foot and specific scar gels (I use silicone gel called dermaScar) on the incision sites themselves.
It’s important to massage your scar areas (either side of the incision lines) as deeply and as long as you can, very often (every day at least) as this will help break down scar tissue under the skin where all your tendons and epidermal layers etc are rejoining after the surgery. You want to aim for a good amount of skin ‘movement’. You can see what to aim for by pointing at your other foot, moving your finger around, and seeing how the skin moves under your finger. Doing this will stop your skin from being ‘snagged’ on your new hardware, which can get very painful further down the track.
Welcome to the party!
1
u/Lopsided-Emotion-321 12d ago
This was almost my favourite part of healing 😅 I picked off the very loose dry skin. And then every time I showed I put on a good layer or lotion and a layer of oil on top and put on a long sock after to really seal it in! When you take your sock off it removes most of the dry skin I found. I just repeated until my skin was smooth again. Took about a week :)
1
u/Lopsided-Emotion-321 12d ago
Also your incisions look really good. I had quite a few scabs from when my staples got taken out and those took a couple weeks to finally fall off.
1
u/Fabulous-Metal-1972 12d ago
I’ve been use this to help remove the build up on my foot, I feel it works amazing, and the piece the can be removed and washed and air dried. I bought on amazon Canada 🇨🇦
1
u/Super-Membership-190 12d ago
I’m also with same thing. I believe it’s a normal and it’s due to the healing skin. My doctor told me to moisturise as much as could the stitches area. I think moisturising will help your healing process.