Page1) About me, injury, surgery
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Brief Introduction
I’m an IT Manager and 40 years old. I have a wife and 2 kids. I’ve been very active my whole life. I’ve played soccer since I was 6 years old. I also snowboard, run, and play racquetball. I’ve had several injuries in my life including 2 bone fractures in my right foot, a fully torn ACL in my left knee, and more. 2016 is the year of the Achilles Avulsion for me. Yay…(sarcasm). Welcome to the over 40 club.
I have been doing lots of Internet searching and have found very few blogs on the Achilles Avulsion. In fact, the best blog I could find is on this site from 2009/2010 from assumptiondenied at http://achillesblog.com/assumptiondenied/. Big thanks to assumptiondenied for a detailed blog through the recovery. Seeing how this blog is several years old I felt compelled to add a new blog for all of my fellow Achilles Avulsion cool friends out there 
In addition, thank you to the creator of achillesblog.com.
The Injury
July 27th, 2016 I was playing indoor soccer on a Wed. night. It is an over 40 league and I turned 40 in January. My achilles had been sore off and on for a few months. I had been resting and I assumed that it was okay, maybe just a little sore and it would “work out” after I warmed up and the game started. About 10 minutes in I stole the ball from an attacker and then I took the ball quickly to space…then…it felt like that guy kicked me as hard as he could in the back of my right calf. I was mad and I turned to look at him. Nobody was there. I was standing by myself with nobody near me. Then I realized that it was my achilles. I immediately assumed that it was a rupture. I got help off the field and called my wife to come pick me up and bring crutches. I kept the leg elevated and iced it until I made my doctors appoint that Friday with an orthopedic doctor. I had a very active lifestyle with running, soccer, racquetball, snowboarding, etc….and I knew I would put on some pounds very quickly if I did not start a diet immediately. So, I did. After reviewing the x-ray and performing the “Thompson’s test”, the doctor referred me to a foot/ankle specialist at the same well known Ortho clinic. The specialist quickly determined by looking at the x-ray that it was an Achilles Avulsion and ordered an MRI. The MRI was mainly used to give him more information for the surgery.
The Achilles Avulsion, not to be confused with the ATR, diagnoses is frequently missed and sometimes only revealed during surgery! An Achilles Avulsion is when the Achilles tendon detaches at the heal bone and most of the time a piece of the bone is still attached to the bottom of the tendon. This bone still attached to the tendon can be seen floating slightly above the heal bone in an x-ray.
See the x-ray image below. This is what it looks like. See the small bone/tail above the heal bone?
http://achillesblog.com/achillesavulsion/files/2016/09/avulsion-fig1.jpg
The Surgery
Thursday August 18th, 2016 was the surgery date. I was nervous and my blood pressure was higher than normal. I had an ACL surgery Jan 2000, so I knew kind of how this was going to go. But, I also knew that the Achilles recovery might be more painful, longer, and harder. The surgery method used for my Achilles Avulsion was a bit different than the one for “assumptiondedied”. Assumptiondenied had a button on the bottom of the heal to “anchor” the Achilles. I had 2 anchor screws on the back of the heel that the stiches are threaded through and held tightly. Not sure if one method is better than the other. I’ll leave that up to you and your doctor. The surgeon said everything went well. He did mention that he had to shave off a lot of bone on the back of my heal due to the boney bump that had formed over the years. He also had to make a small incision at the bottom of my calf to “lengthen” my Achilles so it could be reattached to my heel bone.