aaronjohnson’s AchillesBlog

just got cleared for two shoes today. how long til you were driving ? also, did you continue to wear the boot outside the house?

2 shoes is big milestone that comes with big responsibilities
as well.

I didn’t find details about your surgery from your posts , may be I just missed it. Anyway, unless you got “enforcement” on top of your stitched tendon I would be extreme aware of any unplanned foot move or activities for the next 4 weeks.
If you comfortable start balancing on your foot for 10 sec to 60 sec next to the wall or anything that you can get support.
It isn’t just about your calf - trust me.

wish you faster recovery - just don’t over do it at 1st month.

Congratulations,

You will start to notice leaps and bounds on your recovery. I agree with Larry above to be careful. I read that you are a lifter, so be careful, “no pain, no gain” does not apply to this injury.

Congrats on your big day…..everyday you will feel and see the difference. Just be careful because you are most vulerable now.

Also, how quickly you go to FWB, depends on:

Whether you had surgery
Strength of repair
Type of repair
Your doctors rehab protocol
Your age, health etc

Just do what they say is my motto, unless you have a medical degree and more exp than them - lol

Hi All,

I am two weeks post op. My Specialist put me in a boot 10 days post op and FWB. They feel that this is better for healing. Physio starts soon, I should be back to 100% within three - four months. I have done this before(about 8 years ago) and followed the same regime. I think this time round I will be retireing from Marathons after my next one.

I think it is important that people access a sports specialist and someone that specialises in this type of specfic injury, it will cost you, but, worth the money.

Ask heaps of questions and for what your are paying they should be answered!!

Take care, great site!

I went non-op and went to full weight bearing around 4 weeks.

The first day of full weight bearing the bottom of my heel felt quite sore, the way it might after standing a long time in flip flops or some other shoe with no support

it only lasted a day or two.

+1 to both of those posts. You MUST find a way to balance out the height of your two feet! (JLA, do you have all that text on a hot-key?)

The dead skin under your foot is typical, as is the pain under the heel when first WB. (In fact, everything but the red cauliflower “granulation tissue” is super-normal in our little group. But I can’t believe that the dead skin is the cause of the pain. Au contraire, a thick pad under there should give a bit of extra comfort, but NOOOO! I think I slipped a squishy gel footpad under my foot in the boot for extra padding — though that also means you have to build up the other shoe even MORE!

My PT recommended sitting, taking off the boot, and rolling your/my heel over a golf ball, to give the bottom of the heel a nice deep massage. (If it’s too deep, try another kind of ball.) It seemed to help me. It should pass fairly soon, and I would NOT recommend being super-macho and working through or ignoring that pain, or you might develop a real heal spur, aka plantar fasciitis, which is Not Nice!

Many of us experienced sole and heel-bottom pain again when moving to 2 shoes, and found squish

dear aaron

it also took me 4-5 days to ditch the crutches.

to balance out my gait , i got a pair of these shoes in black :

http://www.payless.com/store/product/detail.jsp?skuId=077526100&productId=67088&subCatId=&catId=cat10376&lotId=077526&category=&catdisplayName=Brands+

my physical therapist is a huge fan of my purchase.

rsn
ruptured it august 3rd, surgery august 5th
cast off sept 7th, now in a boot

Hi aaronjohnson, It talks about four or five days to completely wean off of the crutches when you first get into the boot. It is a huge step and so great to finally not have to use crutches. Hang in there.

Here’s some advice about balancing out your hips while in the cam walker to make walking easier, more comfortable and less likely to cause hip, back or knee problems. I put insoles in my good foot’s shoe to try to balance my hips but that wasn’t quite enough to balance me as much as I’d like. It didn’t make up for the thickness of the sole of the cam walker. So I took my right shoe (good foot) to a shoe repair shop and they put sole material under my shoe until I felt balanced. After these measurements, the shoe repairman added a 3/4″ sole to the bottom of the shoe to even me out. It made walking was so much easier, more comfortable and, the added bonus, I could walk faster with an almost normal gait.
I used an old running shoe that was pretty much worn out since I wouldn’t be able to use the shoe again after I went two shoes full time, which I did a couple of weeks ago. The shoe repair shop simply added the additional

I’ve looked at other protocols and it seems the one my doc recommends is in the middle somewhere. I gotta admit, while I understand that a quicker more aggressive protocol might produce good results… I fail to see the need to “push it” It seems to me that a tendon can always be stretched….but if a protocol is aggressive and not healed that would produce problems. Maybe it’s a safer route…..I’m ok with safe I never want to be back here.

I don’t know the plan after the boot…I usually ask my questions every two weeks….for only the following two weeks. It seems such a long recovery I really don’t want to know everything at once. I just worry about the two weeks ahead. Anyway, I’ll find out more on the 14th.

It’s a fixed boot.

In terms of the UWO study I can see how there’s a difference in stretching the tendon….but it would seem to me every tendon will be different, so to determine a 2cm heel lift for every tendon might be a vague technique. While the unknown amount my doc uses might be subjective….it is subjective to the amount of tension the individual person feels in the tendon itself. With the purpose bein

Welll regardless his thoughts I’ll be working upper body once I can walk in my boot. I’m not gonna push it, try to press my biggest lift, nor walk around in a boot with dumbbells in my hand, but i’m gonna start trying to maintain where I’m at. I can avoid lifts that would strain my leg in any way, and use nautilus (even though I’m a free weigh guy).

After all the doc didn’t say no….he said “I’d advise against it” That’s not a hard no…that’s a recommendation. My doc is great, but I really don’t see the harm.

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I already gave you all my “rants” on your previous page — but they still stand!!

aaron - re upper body, i certainly was not advised against it. Of course, the gym is a dangerous place to be with a recently repaired achilles. So my early upper body exercises were limited to using therabands of various tensions whilst sitting with my leg up! Above all, it gave the feeling that i was still able to keep some form of exercise regime going - and my injured leg was totally uninvolved so no risks.

This did give a natural progression once (on the advice of my physio and a few weeks post-repair!) i introduced theraband-based exercises for my injured ankle. At that point it simply became an additional set of exercises to my regime.

Perhaps you doc thinks upper body exercises may raise your blood pressure / create swelling around your injury?

daviduk

Still early times. But stair-butting and crutching are both scary activities, to be finished with as soon as possible, consistent with a good modern protocol that’s proven to produce good results with a bunch of complete ATRs. Like bit.ly/UWOProtocol .

See if your Doc is familiar with it, or with the study that used it. If not, give him a copy of what’s published (Wiki “ATR” article, ref. #7). Getting to gentle exercise and PT early (like now, 2 weeks in) seems to produce good results. And boots are much easier to live with than splints or casts in other ways, too. A few people here have made life MUCH better for the ATR patients that follow them, by helping to bring their Docs up to speed.

Getting FWB (in a boot) at or right after 4 weeks is a joy, a balm for the soul, a physical and psychological relief — and it seems to be good for the leg, too! There’s zero chance that your Doc has any evidence that his slower, harder, sadder way works any better than the UWO way. But you could always ask him if he’s got any evidence. And share if he does.

Any idea how long he wants to leave you in the boot after 5-6 weeks? Is it a sp

Hopefully. Last Monday I again put weight on my foot on accident. Again in the bathroom after getting out of the shower. I see the doc again tomorrow, so I guess I’ll know then if I messed something up or not.

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Hang in there man. It gets better.

I completely agree!! Looking back, I had achilles tendinitis for at least 1 week before the POP. As unfortunate as it is to rupture this tendon, I think I will listen to my body a lot more in the future. Especially since I am not getting any younger!!

I think my case was similar. Training for a marathon means lots of middle distance runs (5-15 miles)

My achilles would be tight every morning, and sleeping on my stomach with feet in plantarflexion did not help.

Not 100% sure how footwear comes into play