agnesatr’s AchillesBlog

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Yay! I made it to month 6. It’s official - it’s been 1/2 a year since my rupture. I cannot believe that I survived and doing pretty well. Here is what’s been happening in the last month.



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RUNNING
So, in the last month I continued progressing in “Back to Running Program”. I am now in stage 5, which is 48 minutes of intervals of 2 minutes running and 1 minute fast walking. I managed to clock 7K in that time. The stage before that was 36 minutes and I was doing 5K intervals in that time. The achilles definitely gets a workout as far as stretch and my calf gets super tense. It actually feels really good after, meaning, I finally feel that calf is alive again and stretching it after running feels good. With all the good feeling comes some pain as well. The ankle is definitely still stiff and towards the end of the run I can feel the achilles more and need to force the foot more into plantar flexion with each step to relieve the pain. All was more or less good with 5K intervals. When I started 7K however, the hamstring in my good leg started giving me problems. This is probably due to compensating for the lack of strength and dorsiflexion in my bad leg. I am taking a break from running to heal that and will resume when my glute/hamstring feel better. I miss the every other day running already, but there is enough of other work to be done on the body, so it’s fine.

Here is a pic from my run during our trip to TX. Such nice weather there in comparison to Seattle at the moment!




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5K UGLY SWEATER RUN
To celebrate my 6 months, I signed up for 5K Ugly Sweater Run. I knew I can do it when I hit stage 4 of the running program and could do 5K intervals with no problem. It was an exciting goal to work towards to. The run was great. I actually managed to run the whole thing with no stops. Took me 29min 33sec, which is average pace of 9.5min/mile. Worse than before injury for sure, but who cares, I can run! My pace initially was good, the last 1.5km suffered a bit. I felt amazing after knowing that the achilles held up well! The hamstring in my good leg was another story, lol. I am now working on healing it.




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PHYSICAL THERAPY
The biggest part of the last month was the physical therapy (PT). I still have been going to the clinic 2x week and the rest of the days I do about 1.5- 2 hours of PT exercises at home. I take one day a week as a break from any lower body workouts to rest up a bit. I get massage therapy 1x week and I try to take a rest-day the day after that. Massage therapy is really painful, but seems to be helping out with loosening up the muscles. I have been sore here and there below waist almost daily, so there is lots of knots and tightness. My glutes/hips/hamstrings are really getting some workouts on top of calfs.

As far as the exercises, my physical therapist keeps adapting them based on how my body responds to different things and based on my achilles pain level. He makes me try different types of calf raises, some on flat, some on incline, some on decline. I also have been working on jumps and ankle mobilization. I am doing single leg jumps now, but they are still bit hard. I continue with glutes/hips/hamstings exercises and doing lots of balancing. My physical therapist makes me use BOSU ball at the clinic and I finally decided to get it for home as well. I can see using it in the future as part of my workouts. I really enjoy doing balance exercises on it. Lots of different options. I also got the wobbly cushion. That one is hard!

Here are some exercises I have been doing in the last month:
- Double calf raises - continuing these with weights. Doing them on flat and occasionally on the stairs. It all depends on achilles tendon pain. If I aggravate it by stretching it too much my physical therapist told me to go back to the floor until the pain is gone. (pic in last month post)

- Single calf raises (with straight leg and bent leg) - doing them with weights. So far have been doing 3 sets of 20 with 15lbs. Just this week though I increased the weight to 30lbs and doing 3 sets of 10 to work more on strength. Will be increasing weight gradually.

- Eccentric calf raises - still doing them daily, 3 sets with straight and 3 sets with bent leg. Have been doing them with weights on floor. When doing them on stairs, it was aggravating my achilles too much. NOTE: I am doing them for my healthy leg as well. Just being paranoid about rupturing my good leg now or in the future. Time to start working on it as well! (pic in last month post)

- Single leg bridges on ball and double leg double bridges on ball - still a daily routine and it still works these glutes and hamstrings! (pic in last month post)

- Balance on BOSU ball (squats/single leg squats/skaters). Using both sides of BOSU.

- Balance with bands (pic in last month post)

- Side walks with bands

- Lunges and squats (pic in last month post)

- Foot tapping - that’s a new one and really works on my injured ankle, which gets so stiff! This seems simple, but it is actually hard! I do it now 3 sets of 45 seconds.

- Stretching (pic in last month post)



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CALF STRENGTH
Last week my physical therapist ran a strength test on my calf. I first did max number of single calf raises I could do on my injured leg. I managed 60. Then I did the same on healthy leg and managed 100 or so. So it looks like my injured calf is about 60% strength of my healthy one. Still lots of work to be done here. In normal daily activities I do not feel too much lack of strength, but when I need to do anything on my injured leg alone, I definitely still feel weakness.



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DORSIFLEXION
As I wrote last month, we started working on my dorsiflexion flexibility. I am now comfortably at 7-7.5cm when not warmed up. My physical therapist started doing some more manual work on my tendon to increase the flexibility. He has been working on my calf throughout my PT sessions, but now does more tendon and ankle specific work as well including using tube tape, foam roller and more specific tendon massages. This week he started Graston tool and massaging stick. Ouch, these were really painful. Thankfully, the pain was only during the session and did not linger afterwards. In the couple of sessions I was doing also more intense stretching with weights and bands and on incline. We were able to get me from 7cm to 9.5cm in last session. Not bad. I know it will not stay there, but it’s a work in progress. I am also doing stretches at home. Initially 3x day standing stretches, as shown in last month’s post. Now, also added stretch using foam roller on tendon itself. This one is little painful, but the pain does not stay long. Still long way to go to 16cm…



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ACHES AND PAINS
Last month was full of aches and pains.

Achilles tendon pain: At the beginning of last month, I had a week when I overdid it again. I had to take extra day of break and also move my calf raises to floor instead of step. That helped and pain disappeared after few days. When I came back to the step again, the achilles pain came back, so I went back to the floor once more. This time the pain lasted 6 days. I had to lay off running at that time as well. Now as per advise of my physical therapist, I do double calf raises on step and all other calf raises on the floor. So far that seems to be balanced enough and lets me keep the achilles pain away.

Healthy leg knee pain: my physio thinks that this is due to me compensating with healthy leg while squatting. That makes sense. I reduced number of squats for the time being. I am also doing lunges with my injured leg forward only. The knee pain is getting better.

Healthy leg upper hamstring/lower glute pain: this one is definitely from running and due to compensation for the injured leg’s lack of strength/flexibility. I am giving hamstring in healthy leg a rest and doing only some isometric hamstring/glute exercises on a ball as per physical therapist advise. Massage therapy on glute/hamstring almost threw me off the bed last week it was so painful, but it made it feel a bit better afterwards. Lets see how painful it is tomorrow. I am dreading it already…

Injured calf soreness: now this is a welcomed pain! Nothing better than waking up, moving my injured leg and actually feeling your calf! On days after running, that’s the best! I so missed this feeling! One does not realize how precious something is until you loose it. Well, we all loose our calfs in the process of this injury and it surely is nice to start getting it back!



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GETTING MY LIFE BACK
So, last month was pretty much more of the same with some modifications. Lots and lots of lower body work, managing and working around the pain and seeing good progress in strength and flexibility. Life is definitely pretty much coming back to normal. I am getting back to more or less similar social life as well.

Below, I am back to climbing ladder, here, putting Christmas lights on our house. I have to admit, I did not think about my achilles. I was more concerned about staying on the ladder.

Ah, and a funny thing: I have been wearing heels a lot. Achilles just feels so much better and my heel inserts do not fit in all my boots (we have winter here in Seattle already). Now, whoever I meet always exclaims that I am all recovered ’cause I am wearing heels. I have to then explain that I am still unable to walk properly in flat shoes (or bare foot), but wearing heels removes pressure from the achilles and I can walk pain free with more ease this way. I understand that, when one does not think about it, it is counter intuitive and it’s a natural reaction, but I have been doing a lot of explaining lately! lol




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ENTERING SECOND HALF OF RECOVERY YEAR

One big thing I realized this month; and if you are reading it very early in your recovery, here is some food for thought for ya. At the beginning of my journey, once my doctor confirmed a full achilles tendon rupture, I just accepted it. I literally said: “Oh well, s#!t happens. I guess if you do things, sometimes things will happen to you. I still would rather do things and have things happen than do nothing.” Then I accepted the fact that this injury is no joke and that recovery time is about a year. I did not hold hope for anything faster, I just took it for what it was and decided to dedicate myself to recovery. I also decided not to look far ahead. Yes, I kept reading blogs and medical papers to see what’s coming, but I was concentrating on short term goals for myself. Because of my early acceptance, anything that came ahead of schedule was a bonus and was welcomed happily. However, I was really not depressed about any stage of recovery, because I knew that that’s part of it and there is absolutely no way around it. So, when I was NWB, it was what it was, when I was fighting limp or heel pain, it was part of the process for me. Now, I am trying to gain flexibility and strength and fight all the pains and I know that’s part of the process. It will pass as well.

So, for everyone that is starting out, or having hard time, try to accept this injury for what it is and understand that it is a serious one. Work hard, concentrate on short term goals and know that the stage you are in will pass and new one will start.

Happy healing to all and onto the next stage, whichever it might be for you at the moment!



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