Exactly one month

Hey Everyone:

It’ been about a month since my last post.  I’ve been back at school crutching from class to class and have been quite busy.  For those of  you that are new to this injury, the pain disappers pretty quickly.  The first three or four days weren’t too cool, but after that my pain has decreased significantly.  Right now I’d say it is a 0/10.  Tomorrow I meet with my doctor and my wedges will be taken out of the boot, so that my foot basically forms a right angle with my leg.  I just hope that my achilles tendon has healed correctly and that it won’t be painful.  I have another two weeks of NWB at neatral, and then I have two weeks of partial weight bearing.  The cast will come off somewhere between weeks eight and ten, and I’m definitely hoping for week eight.  This injury is very interesting really.  It doesn’t hurt that much, but it sure does change a lot of things.  I was extremely sad in the very beginning because this is my senior year of college and I graduate in May.  This wasn’t exactly what I had planned, but I guess there isn’t much that I can do about it.  After a week, I felt a lot better about it because I have a lot of great friends that are helping me out.  But now I’m back to the stage where I am just getting sick of this and want to drive my truck, ride my dirt bike, walk up stairs normally, drink more than two beers at a bar, shower in less than an hour, and just walk normally.  I have spring break starting tomorrow and I was planning on going to Cancun or Florida.  Now I’m going home and I don’t know what I’m going to do.  I think the highlight of my break might be seeing a movie.  My buddy and I were going to drive to SC to visit some family, but he decided to stay home and search for jobs.  I was hoping that it would work out, but oh well.  I’m from WI and we were going to stop in Indianapolis to see the badger basketball team play in the big ten which would have been really neat.  I’ve really tried to keep a positive attitude throughout this, but I’m really having trouble now.  It’s been winter here in WI for awhile and its finally starting to get nice.  It’s been in the upper forties this week and kids are starting to wear tshirts.  I want to be outside.  I am frustrated that I can’t do the things that I normally do.  I know this is only temporary, but it sure doesn’t seem like it.  Hope you’re all healing well and are dealing with this better than me.  Hopefully I can find something to do for a week that might brighten up my attitude.

Big Boot and my laptop

Hey everyone! This is my first blog and I’m sort of curious about this whole process. I have found this page to be extremely helpful in answering my numberous questions. I completely ruptured my right achilles tendon on 1/31/10 and crutched around at school for two weeks. I finally had surgery on 2/12/10 and got my boot on 2/16/10. The first full day after surgery I was in a lot of pain, but it has decreased significantly. I was quite upset in the very beginning because I graduate in May and I had lots of “plans”. I was supposed to go to a concert last Friday in Madison and attend an industrial engineering regional conference this coming weekened. I wanted to play football in the spring, do some turkey hunting, ride my dirt bike, and go backpacking in Europe for a month this summer. It is easy to get upset when something like this happens. It really puts life in perspective because it makes you realize how truely lucky you are. I never really thought about how lucky I am to be able to walk everywhere I go, to be able to roll around when I sleep, to stand in the kitchen and cook dinner without getting tired, and drive my truck. This condition of not walking isn’t fun, but it is tempoary and I have understood this. I think that the most important thing to do is to maintain a positive attitude and let your body heal. I’m sure there will be moments when I get frustrated and I don’t have that positive attitude, but I guess I’ll just have to try and get rid of if and enjoy life.