A Listicle is a little list but Mine's a Big One...

I promised you a while back a Listicle of  vital stuff if thinking about or preparing for a Bunion operation.

So as we are nearing the end of the daily chronicling of Bunion's Progress, it seems an appropriate time to be constructive and practical.
So in no particular order....

1. Just do it. After two weeks, if you have a sedentary job, you can contemplate returning if you can cope with the elevation factor. You will feel knackered, and should go gently. Only be a hero if you are being paid sack loads of cash or people's lives depend on it.

2. Do it while you are young enough to make a good recovery and feel a strong incentive to get back on two feet again. Don't leave it until you have hip and knee problems or you will feel overwhelmed by the complexity of it all.

3. Help at home is a luxury, but frankly, if all goes well, and the layout of your domestic arrangements allows, you can actually do enough to keep yourself watered and fed throughout the day.

4. Think through your sleeping arrangements. Access to a bathroom and a front door is ideal. A chiming grandfather clock is ill-advised. However, access to a bathroom initially is more important than anything else, in the first week.

5. Plan ahead. Put your foot in a bucket to restrict mobility, (just to simulate medi-boot)and imagine what you will need in your immediate vicinity. (Hairdryer, face creams, unguents, potions, phone charger, backscratcher, poker, poker?)
You only need limited clothes that can be bunged in wash and dried overnight. Set up convenient underwear drawer. Borrow or steal man's large sock for everyday wear after bandages removed.

6. Accept offers of ready meals from all sources.

7. Buy some waterproof foot covering and follow the instructions, so you can shower with Impunity. (Who he?)

8. Check your First aid kit. Mine was parlous. Had to stick  gauze on with Micky mouse plasters.. Decorative but useless. You only need it for a couple of days after bandages removed, but put Gauze and Micropore tape on the list.
Ibuprofen by the hundred weight. Good for reducing swelling/inflamation.
Put E45 or Bio Oil on shopping list to rub into wound. (Not as ouchy as it sounds, and it helps to make skin supple as it heals.)

9. Make your own ice-pack using petits pois before anyone deems an large bag of Birdseye peas meets your needs.

10. Make sure you have a supply of stamps and birthday cards for dates that occur during convalescence, and address book.

11. Stack up with books and mags but accept that your attention span will have shrunk to gnat-size. (And that all your grand intentions of reading "War and Peace" in the original will be oot ra windy (as they say in Glasgow; or out of the window, as we say in the South).

12. Be prepared for a plethora of foot jokes and smile as though they are all original.

13. Do not write Bunion blog as it is an over-subscribed market and you will have nothing new to add. I have learnt this and pass on my wisdom to you.

14. However, if you fancy the distraction, it is a brilliant way of occupying an idling mind.