What Does Sleeping After Bunion Surgery Look Like? (2024)

FAQs

What Does Sleeping After Bunion Surgery Look Like? ›

Sleeping After Bunion Surgery: Traditional vs Minimal

Keep Your Foot Elevated While Sleeping

This helps reduce swelling and pain and speeds up the healing process. The best way to elevate your foot is to prop it up on a pillow. You can also use a special bunion surgery recovery sock, which helps to keep your foot in the correct position.

For the first two weeks, you should keep your foot elevated for 55 minutes in each hour, and you should only walk a few metres at a time, wearing your surgical shoe when weight bearing.

You may sleep without your boot once you are 4 weeks from surgery. after surgery you will be allowed to bear weight on your foot as tolerated in your boot. This may change based on skin healing or other added procedures. Use your crutches, walker, or knee scooter for a total of 4 weeks after surgery.

Some patients find that their foot pain is worse at night after surgery. This is usually due to increased pooling of blood in the feet at the end of the day.

Nevertheless, if your doctor determines it is safe for you to sleep on your side, you may do so as long as you have a support mechanism tucked between your knees or ankles. A support “mechanism” can be as simple as one or two plush pillows or a specially designed foam block.

Bunion surgery usually hurts for the first 48 hours after surgery then calms down. The worst time is 24-48 hours after surgery when the local anesthesia that was used to numb up your foot completely wears off. Ice and elevation almost constantly are the best way to manage your pain!

Patients will not be able to feel the screws as they are placed within the bone. Screws are titanium alloy which are inert to the human body in the vast majority of cases. In fact, bone grows around the screw, rather than rejecting it. They can be safely left in forever.

Putting any weight on an operated foot or ankle can damage the repair that's been done. Bones need time to heal.

Do you limp after bunion surgery? ›

When your surgeon allows you to begin putting weight on your foot, your physical therapist will help you regain a normal walking pattern, or gait. It is not uncommon to limp after a bunion surgery or to develop a tendency to roll your foot outward in an effort to avoid rolling off the affected big toe.

Possible causes for excessive fatigue in the weeks following surgery include pain medications, infection, anemia, and depression.

You should wear the postoperative shoe, day and night. You can wiggle the toes, but the aim of this fortnight is to rest and get the skin wounds soundly healed. If you are sitting raise the foot on a chair, or by sitting across a sofa – this will reduce the swelling.

Six weeks after the operation, the majority of people felt no pain. The most severe pain was felt three days after the operation, and the least severe pain was felt six weeks after the operation.

It is important to rest and keep your foot elevated above the level of your heart for 23 hours a day for the first 2 weeks after your surgery. Elevating of your foot will encourage healing and decrease the chance of wound infection and break down. It will also help with pain and swelling.

Ice and elevation

Put a thin cloth between the ice and your skin. Prop up your foot and leg on a pillow when you ice it or anytime you sit or lie down during the next 3 days. Try to keep it above the level of your heart. This will help reduce swelling.

You may need to refrain from driving for a week or more after surgery. Exercises or physical therapy may be recommended to help the foot recover its strength and range of motion after surgery. High heels should be avoided for at least 6 months after surgery.

Most bunion splints are to be worn while you are sleeping or lounging around the house, mainly because they are difficult to walk around in, and nearly impossible to fit inside a shoe!

Putting any weight on an operated foot or ankle can damage the repair that's been done. Bones need time to heal. Plates or screws that may have been added during surgery need the bones to heal around them. Adding weight too soon can interrupt this important internal healing process.