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!

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

I had tickets to yesterday’s baseball game, Washington Nationals vs LA Dodgers, and I just had to go. The Washington Nationals are my adopted team, and the LA Dodgers are the team that I grew up with in Los Angeles so this was a must see. Since my injury I have attended two games, both when I was PWB in the boot with crutches, and I switched out my seats for ADA “handicapped” seats and everything worked out okay. Yesterday I decided to use my regular seats, which are all the way down right on the field in the 3B corner, meaning I have a loooong set of concrete stairs to go down and up to get to the seats. To top it off, yesterday was a heat warning day in Washington DC - high heat and extreme humidity with heat index values in the 100’s. If you have never been to the Washington DC area in the dog days of summer, the place is absolutely miserable. It is built in a swamp and it just swelters, and yesterday was predicted to be the hottest day of the year so far.

So with that background, I decided that it just was not practical to wear my walking boot - it would get uncomfortable, be difficult on the stairs, and also be difficult in terms of people stepping over me to get in and out of the row. I wanted to sit in my seats, not in the ADA section. Since I am at 8.5 weeks post-op and doing well in PT I decided to give it a go in two shoes.

I bought a special pair of shoes just for this purpose. My background is military and law enforcement and I am kind of a nut for tactical gear. A company out in California called 5.11 Tactical makes great equipment and gives me a veterans discount, so I chose them in selecting a protective boot to wean in to out of my Aircast boot. After looking through their selection I decided that I wanted the following qualities in my boot:

- 8 inch height for ankle protection
- lightweight and breathable
- stiff shank to prevent excessive dorsi-flexion
- ability to accommodate a 10mm heel wedge
- comfortable enough fit around my scar
- side zip for easy on and off

I selected the ATAC Sage 8 Inch CST Boot because it had all of those qualities in addition to a composite safety toe (CST) to protect my foot if someone stepped on me. The boots are very comfortable and I took them to my OS appointment and my surgeon really liked them and thought they would be a fine boot to transition into as I moved to two shoes, providing lots of ankle protection and support.

So I am still not driving, my friend picked me up and off we drove to Nationals Park in Washington DC, just south of the US Capitol. We had a parking space right next to the park and I had no problem whatsoever walking in my new boots! I walked a little bit slowly just out of caution, and I was very careful to avoid situations like curbs which would potentially put me into excessive dorsiflexion, but I did just fine. Once inside the concourse I walked all the way to the far side to get to my favorite sandwich stand, over to my seats, down the stairs - no problems at all. Sitting in the seats I was very glad I didn’t have the Aircast boot on as people stepped over me to get to their seats.

After the game I came home and iced my ankle but I really did not have any pain or swelling - I was very pleased as I had worried about both of those issues but neither materialized.

I consider the whole outing a great success, except for the fact that my adopted hometown team lost to my boyhood hometown team I hope this info is useful for anyone transitioning to two shoes. I am going to stay in the Aircast boot for most day to day activity for a couple of more weeks, as my OS had ordered, but it is nice to know I have this option and I am going to use the boots as I start driving again next week.

I had my 8 week post-op appointment with the surgeon today. The good news, everything looks fine. The bad news - OS wants me to continue conservatively over the next 3-4 weeks, wearing the boot most of the time, continuing with strengthening, and walking in two shoes with a heel lift at home. He also did not clear me to drive, which is a disappointment but one that I can work around (I have a very expensive, luxury paperweight form Germany in my garage!). He said that in a year I will not even remember if I was in the boot 2 months or 3 months, but just to be on the safe side to keep wearing the boot with one lift, and to wear my shoes with a lift when I do PT and around the house. It doesn’t really bother me - I have good ROM, I am getting my strength back, and I would rather not risk future problems, so I will stick with the status quo for now.

In physical therapy I am progressing to leg strengthening exercises now that I am healed and have a relatively normal range of motion, so I will continue to work hard to strengthen it up.

Here is a photo taken this morning - my 8 week post-op anniversary photo:

Today I visited the Orthopedic Surgeon 6 weeks to the day after my surgery.  I have been FWB in the boot for over a week and I am now walking without any crutches or cane.  The doc did the Thompson Test on both sides, noted proper function. He also noted atrophy in my right calf, fairly normal.  I have well-developed, muscular legs so the atrophy in the calf muscles is pretty apparent.

I told the doctor I have been showering out of the boot, standing on my bare feet in the shower and carefully walking from the shower to the bedroom to dress.  He looked a bit alarmed and told me to be careful. He also told me to continue physical therapy, and per protocol to begin to wean out of the boot.  He took one of the three lifts out of my boot which feels much better, and we set our next appointment for two weeks from today.  He still doesn’t want me driving for at least a couple of weeks.  He also warned me not to do any dorsiflexion past neutral in PT, and to continue strengthening through resisted plantarflexion, leg presses, and to start balance exercises.

I feel really good.  I have no pain at all.  My wound is healed and dry except for one little spot that continues to ooze just a little bit.  I have no problem putting more than my full body weight on my right leg wearing the boot - I stand up and put all my weight in that leg and it doesn’t hurt at all.

So, fingers crossed - I will wean out of the boot and continue physical therapy over the next two weeks.  I am extremely anxious to start driving again and hope to be cleared to drive in two weeks - I have a very expensive German paperweight sitting in my garage waiting for me to get behind the wheel!

That’s it for now - here are two pictures that my wife snapped during the exam - you can see the significant thickening in my right calf comparing it to my left one.

My Physical Therapist gave me a copy of my Post-Op protocol, which I am following now 4 1/2 weeks after surgery, and I thought I would post it for you.  I am glad I chose my surgeon, with an aggressive protocol.

• 2 WEEKS Post-Op

Begin PT

Partial WB in boot with heel lift

No dorsiflexion past neutral

Edema control

Ankle AROM all directions

Ankle mobility/joint mobilizations

Foot intrinsic strengthening

Scar tissue mobilization, STM along gastroc/soleus complex

Quadricep/Hamstring/Hip strengthening and stretching

• 2-4 Weeks Post-Op

Progress WB

Stationary bike in boot

Seated BAPS

Begin resisted plantarflexion (seated heel raises, theraband plantarflexion)

• 4-6 Weeks Post-Op

Wean off crutches (2 crutches to 1 crutch to FWB)

Begin closed chain lower extremity strengthening in three planes of motion when FWB (Mini-squats, wall squats, leg press)

• 6 Weeks Post-Op

Wean out of boot at home (with heel lift in shoe)

Progress to no boot over next two weeks

Ankle brace if prescribed by doctor

Single leg proprioceptive exercises

This post describes the period between my 2 week post-op visit on June 3 and my 4 week visit on June 17.  My visits are on Wednesdays, as was my surgery, so they correspond exactly with my week "anniversary" dates from the surgery.

I was told to begin partial weight bearing (PWB) but I still used the knee scooter almost all the time after coming home from my 2 week post-op on June 3, 2015.  That all changed when I went in for my first physical therapy (PT) session on June 9.  My orthopedic surgeon is part of a medical group in Reston, Virginia called Town Center Orthopaedic Associates.  It is an eight doctor group conveniently located in the same medical complex as our local hospital and ER, and in the same building as the outpatient surgery center where my surgery was done. Sharing the office suite with my orthopedic surgeon is the physical therapy facility, which is really nice because the therapists are part of the same practice, they have access to all the surgeon’s notes, and use protocols developed specifically by my surgeon.  Also, I was getting PT done here for my Achilles tear before I had the ATR, so I already knew and really liked my therapist, Chris Marino, DPT.

On June 9 I showed up for my PT evaluation by Chris. As I mentioned, we know each other.  He took a look at my wound, massaged it a bit with the boot off, and did some basic strength tests.  He looked at the scooter and told me that he never wanted to see it again, that I was done with it, and the we were going to start PWB immediately.  To that end, I put the boot back on, held on to the handlebars of the scooter, and walked across the room holding on to the scooter like a walker.  It felt funky in my right foot and hurt a little bit, but I was walking.  Chris explained that my protocol called for PWB and some basic flexibility during weeks 2-4.

So I started my PT - twice a week.  During this week 2 to week 4 I mainly did flexibility but also some strengthening of the unaffected part of my leg.  I used a BAPS board, picked up marbles with my toes, did seated knee lifts, had my surgery site pretty vigorously massaged. This is a pretty aggressive protocol but I really enjoyed the sessions.  One thing I was seriously warned about by my doctor was not to lift my right foot past 90 degrees of "neutral".  I was still in the boot with two heel lifts so my basic position was slightly toes down.  Man, did it hurt the first time Chris gently flexed forefoot up just a little bit to make my foot neutral at 90 degrees, but after a week I was doing it on my own.

Physical therapy is great.  I also started riding the exercise bike in the boot.  This was great because I had not been getting any exercise.  Chris cleared me to ride the bike as much as I wanted, so on Saturday I went to the gym and rode the bike trainer for half an hour.  I was still getting pain when I didn’t elevate my foot occasionally, so I found the recumbent bike trainer was much better since my feet are naturally elevated on that machine.

My PWB increased dramatically over these two weeks, and by week 3 post-op I was PWB to the extent that I was only using one crutch at home, and when walking with two crutches I was basically walking in the boot and just balancing and taking a little weight off with the crutche. This was progress over those first two weeks.  And yes, I stopped using the knee scooter completely.  I did not consciously increase the proportion of weight on my affected foot, but I found that I unintentionally used it more and more as the pain went away.

Also - I had been using some light aluminum underarm crutches that they gave me at the hospital, but they were very uncomfortable and I found them difficult to use. I went online to a place called "DME Direct" and I spent about USD 80.00 on a nice pair of forearm crutches - fully adjustable with spring tips.  What a difference these made!  No more pain in the armpits, and the spring tips do a great job of absorbing shock. I strongly recommend them - just like I strongly recommend the knee scooter for the period when you are non weight-bearing (NWB).

I didn’t know what to expect at my first post-op visit, six days after my ATR repair surgery.  I was doing well, non-weight bearing. I just stayed home and moved as little as possible, keeping my leg well elevated all week.

At the orthopedic surgeon’s office, we were greeted by Tori, who has the title "physician extender" - she is a certified athletic trainer who works with the surgeon helping with exams, arranging the surgery schedule, and assisting with durable medical equipment.  Tori put me face down on the table and removed the plaster and the splint and bandages and exposed my ankle for the first time since my surgery day. Dr. Kartelian came in and said hello, he said that the stitches looked fine - clean and dry and not swollen, and he announced that he was putting me back in the boot, with heel lifts. He did the Thompson test and everything was working fine (a “negative” result from the test)  He also had Tori order me a set of vaso pumps to prevent blood clots.  These are like blood pressure cuffs that go on your lower legs and inflate and deflate to move blood and prevent blood clots.

So my instructions for the following week were no weight bearing, stay in the boot except 3 times a day use the pumps for about a half hour, elevate as much as possible, use ice, keep the wound dry.  They left the stitches in and covered the stitches with a bandage and some flexible adhesive tape which wrapped around my ankle a couple of times.  I was thrilled to be going back into the boot after just 6 days!  I would have to wear the boot all the time, including in bed, but again, I could take it off to ice and to use the vaso pumps.  My next appointment would be in another week, and hopefully my stitches would come out then.  I have posted a photo of my stitches 6 days after surgery,