4 months and dancing again! (well, after a fashion . . .)
At the end of October my wife and I treated ourselves to a couple of days at a Health Spa in Bournemouth. At the time I could not walk without pain so took the crutches just in case. These were useful as while my wife was busy with retail therapy I was independent and able to walk around the town and along the prom quite well. The hotel had a pool and a hydrotherapy suite. I found the best thing for the Achilles was to walk in waist deep water. But really the best thing about the weekend was the aromatherapy massage . . bliss.
I had been exercising on my exercise bike each day more or less and in November took my road bike for a ride. This was a great success. I have been out a few times since and can now go up some minor hills but I have more work to do to get back to my old fitness.
I have had 3 more physiotherapy sessions and Sue said I will have reached a milestone if I can do a heel raise on only my bad leg. I still cannot really do this - at least not without some help. But when I mentioned dancing she said it would be good therapy. So I have now been twice. It is modern jive which is a slow type of jive mainly and it makes you push off with your toes. I found that my bad leg was getting tired halfway through the dance and I found that if I waited until later in the number before I asked someone to dance then it was not so bad. The second time I found that it was my knee which was the limiting factor, not the Achilles or calf muscle, so I need to get on the bike a bit more. Still, I never thought I would be dancing this side of Christmas.
Yesterday, (and this is 4 months post op) I went on a 6 mile walk with friends and had no problems at all! I was ready to call it a day but not because of my Achilles, just generally tired but no limp and no pain.
My ankle still gets swollen at the end of each day but I detect that as the calf muscle is improving the swelling is not quite as bad as it was. The site of the operation is still very thick and quite numb and I suspect this may be permanent.
However, I have noticed one strange thing - if I sit with my legs outstretched before me and, without any additional help, make both feet point as near to my body as possible, I find I can angle the bad foot more than the good foot! I assume that this means the bad tendon is longer than the good tendon. Anybody else notice this?
Overall I am very pleased with progress but need to get out on the golf course. Perhaps this will be in the next blogg.