Completely healed in 5 months??
Yep, that’s what my surgeon told me yesterday. Not fully on board with that way of thinking. I continue to have a major problem with my in incisional area. It is very thick and wearing normal shoes is painful. My PT thought i might have a rejection of the graft used. Surgeon told me it was a blessing and a curse. It appears my body has a very quick healing process by producing a large amount of scar tissue. The downside is that my dr says the girth of my AT will probably not go down and that i need to have custom made shoes.
Im getting a second opinion.
April 29th, 2011 at 11:28 pm
Brutus-
I had to go back and look it up, but my surgeon told me that at 12 weeks (yes, 12 WEEKS) I was “bulletproof” and could do anything that I wanted. My PT about choked on his coffee when I told him what the surgeon said and kept a tight rein on me for about another 12 weeks after that. So, yeah, from the surgeon’s perspective of course you’re fully healed at 5 months. Keep in mind, tho, that many, many surgeons have a very narrow field of view: scar tissue = strong repair; lots of scar tissue = even stronger repair!
April 30th, 2011 at 7:02 am
Wow
You sure hit the nail on the head. That’s exactly what he told me. “that thing won’t pop again…..look at that repair!!”. He is a bit of an egomaniac to begin with. Said that “reefing” or removing the scar tissue is out of the question.
May 1st, 2011 at 2:22 pm
Good luck with the incision and the scar tissue. If all else fails, you could follow my path and eventually tear the other AT. You’ll immediately start referring to your beat-up scarred right leg as your “good” one! Hey presto!!
May 1st, 2011 at 9:03 pm
looks like you and I are on basically the same timeline. what kind of PT / exercise are you doing? I have been told to expect the repaired achilles to always be a little thicker where it was sown back together but that it will continue to “shrink” over the course of up to a year after the surgery. so far so good for me, what has really helped a ton is walking, stretching and heel raises and a lot of self-massage of the tendon and physically pushing the fluid from all the swelling up my leg (yeah, I know, gross).
I suspect what your doc meant was that the repair is healed and you are highly unlikely to rupture your achilles in the same spot. at 5 months, though, I suspect we are both still at increased risk to rupture the repaired achilles in a “new” spot, since the dang thing is still healing and is too tight to withstand serious stresses. I’m curious what your second opinion suggests…
May 2nd, 2011 at 1:57 am
Ruptures of a leg with a healed ATR seem to be vanishingly rare. Many people even report that pre-ATR tendinosis was “cured” by the ATR-plus-healing. It’s even possible that the risks of doing that delayed re-ATR are lower than the initial “background” risks of doing the first one, though I’ve never seen any solid evidence. (If it’s wrong, disproving it might be possible; if it’s right, proving it might not be possible.)
So at some point (and I’d guess it’s before 5 months in), that risk presumably becomes lower than the risk of tearing the other side, which is clearly elevated in those of us who’ve torn one. Among the crowd of ATR patients I’ve “met” on this forum, I’ve seen ZERO that have had a long-delayed tear of the same AT, like after maybe 13-15 weeks or so. But I think I’ve met maybe a dozen like me who’ve torn the other side after the first ATR healed. (There’s also a study on the “other-side” risks, linked in the ATR Rehab Protocols, Publications, Studies page.)
So if you insist on worrying. . .
May 4th, 2011 at 7:27 am
lsjoberg -
Yes, looks like we are on the same schedule. PT is now finished for me with the last month concentrating soley on strengthening exercises. Walk with minimal limp now, can run in water, can also do 1 legged calf raises for 3 seconds at a time. Will continue this plan at home. I am now full time at the gym doing 30 mins of elliptical work and weights. No push off exercises yet. Full running in a month, but not sure I am going down that road. Mornings are tough with a lot of stiffness, but it gradually goes away. Our stories are very similar. Best of luck to you.