Rupture to Recovery

(Posting a bit late about my first visit with surgeon on Wed. 7th)

Exciting. My first visit with the doctor that performed surgery on me. And finally I feel like I’ll have a chance to sit down with the doctor and have a reasonable conversation about the doc’s plans for me going forward.

Ah… not so much.

I get to the hospital and get checked in reasonably easily at the hospital, get in right on time, in fact.  They put me in a room and I see the surgeon.  Simply directs the “Hospital Helper Dude” (editorial note: I have no idea the exact “title”/role of these people, no one tells me anything and I’m not in the “industry” to know better) to remove my cast.

Once sawed off, I have my first opportunity to view the scar.  I see the staples and begin to realize that what initially “felt” like a 3″ scar is actually more like 6″. And it’s sort of on an angle, I didn’t realize the scar would be so close to my heel.

I can feel the lack of strength in my foot being the cast so try not to move it much.  Surgeon comes back in. Hooray, I think! Finally!  He takes a look at the scar, says it “looks good” and tells “Helper Dude” to take out the staples, clean me up and put on another cast.  He then elaborates to tell me that my achilles tendon wasn’t completely torn off, there were still a few strands hanging on so when he fixed me up, he “weaved the tendon” around the stronger strands.   Good? Bad? Whatever, just help me get better, please, is all I ask.

Then he says I’ll be in this cast for 3 weeks, then I’ll move to a boot, otherwise keep the leg elevated, and I should see him next week… and before I could even get a question out, he was gone like the wind to the next patient.

Total time with actual doctor: 2 minutes.

I was hoping to ask about the plan for weight bearing, longer term plans… when I could start putting some weight on, the process he figures I’ll be on and length of time to recover to 2 shoes.  I guess not.  I asked Helper Dude if he could get the doc back and he just said to ask him the question, but he’s not much help.  He says, just ask next week.

The lack of time with the doc wasn’t entirely unexpected, based on my search on the web and excellent find of the website ratemds.com!  And the score of 3.2 out of 5 was ok, opinions were + and - but you can see the bias based on successful and unsuccessful surgeries.  Overall he seemed good enough and I didn’t have much ability to question or feel like I had the time to get second and 3rd opinions all over the city given my immobile situation.  Regardless, any negative dealings I’ve had seem to be more issues from the “process” and not the doctor.  The doctor has been very nice to me other than lack of time.  So for anyone else going through this process or just prior to starting, check out the website here.

Final thought: What a brutal health care system we have.  I wonder if this blog turn into one more about our health care system than my actual injury. I had always known that our system had issues, and I’m glad that people with more critical injuries are given priority and rushed through to key people, but for health issues which are not that severe and for which are the majority, we really need to step it up.

I can see how doctors focus on the OHIP $$$ so they’re raking in the dough. And I recall chatting with doctors about how they’re actually limited to a certain number of visits or surgeries per day, so the government thinks docs are just taking advantage of the system.  Though this may be true, the sad part is they also limit the number of doctors!  So the process is slowed down because of the government’s need to stick to a budget, rather than finding ways to treat people and get them healthy.

Argh, enough ranting. I’m THANKFUL on this Thanksgiving weekend that I am on the positive side of health and the road to recovery looks good.

Cheers!

Brian

Filed under: Uncategorized and