bobfv’s AchillesBlog

Every Wednesday since the day of my surgery on May 20, I think about how another week has passed.  I am really doing great and can honestly say that I am better than I was before the rupture (bearing in mind that I had a diagnosed moderate tear for a few months before the rupture.)  In the past two weeks I traveled on business from my home outside Washington DC to New Delhi, India and back again and I am happy to report that I experienced no swelling or discomfort in the repaired ankle at all.  I have not been icing or elevating just because I don’t need to.

What I have been doing is exercising.  I am back on the elliptical trainer for 30 minute pain-free cardio workouts and when I have time I follow that with a 30 minute walk at 3.1 mph on the treadmill.  I pick 3.1 mph because that is the distance of a 5K run.  Before my injury my standard 5K time was around 30 minutes, so I feel that now I could easily complete (although not RUN) a 5K with an hour or greater limit, so I am starting to look for one here in the area.  I have also been keeping up with the strength and balance training that I learned before I was discharged from PT.  For example, I just got back from the gym where I did 50 2-leg calf raises, 3 sets of 15 balance exercises where I stand on the bad leg and bend down and touch a yoga block with my opposite hand, plus the most important exercise for me now - eccentric strengthening.  Eccentric strength is strength in your muscle as you are extending it, so if you imagine yourself standing on your forefoot - you use eccentric strength when you lower yourself on to your heel.  As recently as 2 weeks ago all I could manage was to drop my heel, but with continued work I am finally getting some control over the process.  Besides walking, I use a leg press machine with 90 pounds (the amount is not important as long as you have some resistance) - then I do basically a 2-legged toe raise on the machine, and I just use my bad ankle to lower myself back to a little past neutral - then back up on two toes, down on one as before.  This eccentric strengthening has really been helping me and I have noticed that my heel soreness has almost disappeared, since I am no longer dropping my heel when I walk.  Going down stairs, I also practice eccentric strengthening by going down to the next step on my toe and lowering the heel.

I have completely normal range of motion, very little pain, and my gait is almost back to normal.  I don’t think I have a limp but my wife tells me I still have a little bit of one.  Oh well - keep doing strength and balance exercises!

For workouts I am using my old running shoes - Asics Gel-Kayano 20’s, with green Superfeet insoles.  I am mostly using the Skechers Shape-up Comfort Walkers for everyday use and have even taken my dogs on a couple of 2-3 mile weekend walks on fairly smooth terrain.  I would like to get back to hiking the trails around my house more regularly now that the weather is nice, which I should be able to do.

My scar looks fine - I rub Bio-Oil on it several times a day mostly because I like how the Bio-Oil smells.

That’s it for now - my advice to everyone starting out with the injury is that the time actually passes quickly - get in to PT as soon as you can and start to reclaim your life from his nasty injury.  I am very pleased I went the surgical route - but of course my perspective is that I did not have any surgical complications, so I guess that is easy for me to say.  It gets better - hang in there!

Hi everyone - I have had quite a bit of progress and passed several milestones since my last post and I wanted to share that information with you!

First off, physical therapy is invaluable - get yourself a therapist you are comfortable with and go and work hard! My therapist Chris is fantastic. He showed me how to ensure I was getting muscle activation when doing my exercises. As my strength has increased he has had me up on my toes, and on the leg press machine doing eccentric strengthening. I have been doing daily cardio at the gym and repeating the leg exercises every other day.

The first milestone of the week came Monday, August 31. I went to the gym and got on to the elliptical trainer and I had a great, 30 minute workout with no pain or swelling in my ankle. Up until Monday I had only been doing the exercise bike for cardio, but adding the elliptical is already making me feel better. I was sore in the evening just because my hips and quads have not been worked out like that in some time, but I will take it slow and get back in to it, alternating bike and elliptical days.

The second milestone came on Tuesday, September 1 - my temporary disabled parking permit expired! I am sad and happy at the same time - much more happy than sad because I don’t need it any more. Obviously - the convenience factor was nice, but thank God I can walk again and I hope I never need one of those passes again.

The third milestone was on Wednesday, September 2 - 15 weeks to the day since my Achilles Tendon Repair surgery! Feeling better every day - no pain and little soreness!

The fourth milestone, like the second, is also bittersweet. Today September 3 I had my last PT session and was officially discharged from PT. It was a great session, about an hour and 15 minutes and I did all my exercises. At the end, my therapist Chris gave me lots of advice for what to do going forward. He had me do some little plyometric hops on both feet which I should continue to do as I can tolerate it, and he showed me how to do planks and lunges on my toes without stressing or hyperextending the Achilles tendon.

I am so pleased with the progress, with the progressive, early weight bearing approach by my surgeon, with the support of my family (especially my sweet wife who drove me around for 2 months!), and the fantastic care I received at physical therapy and Town Center Orthopeadics in Reston, Virginia. I realize I still need to continue to work on healing and to watch myself, but I have a big goal to run the Army Ten Miler road race here in DC a year from now, just as I did a year ago, and several years previously.

Another thing I want to call out are Skechers Shape-up Comfort Walker shoes. These shoes are magic - when I wear them I do not limp and I took my dogs for 3 and 4 mile walks in them this past weekend. Buy them on Amazon or from the Skechers web site - about a hundred dollars very well spent!

Best of luck to you all on your recovery journeys. If you want to discuss any aspect of my recovery journey I am happy to help if I can - Email me at BobFV@aol.com .

My ATR surgery was on May 20, 2015, so technically I will be at 12 weeks post-op this Wednesday (it is Monday, so that is two days from now). Today was the first follow-up with my Orthopedic Surgeon in about a month, due to both of our vacation schedules.

As I mentioned in the last post, I am doing great, walking in two shoes and driving. When I saw my OS today he did the Thompson Test, checked my strength, and said that while he was there for me if I needed anything else, he is done with me, I am discharged! I told him that I have dropped down to one PT session a week and they are scheduled out for about the next month and he told me that should suffice as well, if I continue to work on the exercises I learn in PT on my own, which I have been doing all along.

In PT I have progressed to two footed calf raises with no support (30 a day), eccentric strengthening on a leg press machine, resisted toe walking back and forth. heel walking, calf stretches against the wall, heel to toe balance walking, stability work on a blue Theraband stability trainer, and practice stepping over a step, as opposed to just step-ups for strengthening.

My gait is getting better by the day. The slower I walk, the easier it is to have a normal gait. I concentrate on working my repaired leg through the entire normal range of motion from heel strike to toe push off. I still have just a little pain walking down stairs but I am doing my best to concentrate and work through that and come down stairs the "normal" way rather than one foot at a time.

The OS gave me an instruction sheet which is very helpful. I told him I was starting to develop a little heel pain from the asymmetry of having a heel lift in one shoe and not the other, and he told me to go to "Superfeet" or custom insoles for both feet so that the pressure will be equal. He gave me the following instruction sheet for shoes which I think is extremely helpful:

1. Arch Supports: Custom or over-the-counter "Superfeet"
2. Motion Control Shoes: For example Brooks Beast, New Balance 1012 (and I add Asics Gel-Kayano to that list)
3. Danskos
4. Birkenstocks
5. Skechers Shape-Ups
6. NO barefoot, flip flops, slippers, high-heeled shoes, Uggs or Crocs!
7. To ensure proper support make sure that your shoes DO NOT "bend or fold" excessively.

So I consider it a great day. Still taking things one day at a time, but steadily improving with every passing day