17 days post tear
Well, it’s January 8, 17 days since my tear and one week before I start PT. I’m in my office (attached to my house thank God) and feeling quite good about everything. Since I decided on a non-operative approach, I feel very much “in control” of my outcome. I know that an operation would have stitched things tight and who knows maybe would result in a stronger tendon. I’m betting not.
I’m crutching with ease, boot on 24/7 and no weight bearing escept for a toe or heel touch once in a while for balance. I sleep well, have no pain and certainly no pain from an incision that would have my lower leg in a cast or maybe not even there yet due to scheduling. Looking back on my blog from 4.5 years ago, I realized how much discomfort there was from the operation itself; swelling, inflamation, infection. Sure the tendon was cinched up tight but it still was not held by tissue but by mechanical sutures.
The tendon was be shorter than before the tear but that is the nature of surgery and tying ends together. I still feel tightness in my left tendon 4 and a half years later. In fact I experienced tightness in my whole left leg for a couple of years. Tight calf. Tight ham strings. I worked those issues out with PT, stretching, weight training, walking and determination.
The Doctor monitoring my healing on this one explained that my right leg may on have 80% of the strength of the left one due, in part, to the longer length of the tendon after healing naturally. I suggested to him that this may be what my tendon wanted to be anyway and could have been why it snapped. I tell you, after the tear (and it was a class III tear-complete), I felt very little of the pain that I did during my first tear. Back then, something told me that there was no option but surgery. This time I felt like there was still something there after the rupture.
I’ve read a lot as I am sure all of you have and I am very much encouraged by some of the new school of thought that evolved even since my first injury. I am all for agressive rehabilatation with early PT. I will be working with the same people that I worked with last year when I was trying to straighten out my “kinetic chain” as they call it. They are good at what they do and I am going to be a good client.
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Sounds great to me, Chuck! Lots of folks here have said they WOULD skip the op if they tore their other AT, but it hasn’t actually happened to many of us. Maybe just you and me? Now you’ve GOT to be a great patient AND Watch Your Step — for the “team”!
As you may have read on my page about healing short, I’ve (also) become “a stretching fool” on my post-op-ATR side, too. Calf/AT and quad stretches constantly, roller on the quad, other exercises (which I often skip) — all in the hope of preserving my right knee which has been pulled out of alignment, apparently by that too-short ATR repair (which my surgeon did ON PURPOSE, to make sure I didn’t heal long).
Main diff betw your two treatments and mine is that you actively chose yours! I “chose” surgery in late 2001 because I got “The Talk” (which was justified back then, but it’s still alive like a Zombie after the evidence has killed it). In late 2009, I searched for an OS who would repair my other one. Thought I’d found one, then he told me he’d quit doing ATR surgery after meeting the UWO-Study authors at the AAOS-2009 conference! NOW I’m the pushy guy, but then I was the compliant ATR patient!
This is a great results! I wish you all thes best!
Good luck Chuck,
Keep us posted,
Ron