rupture and then re-rupture…this is my story…

Today was my first day without using crutches. I’m finally getting back to where I left off prior to re-rupture. In the last 8 days I’ve removed two of the four heel lifts from my boot and went from PWB to FWB. It feels good to finally be able to have some independence back again. I hated asking for people to carry everything for me.

I’ve had a quite a bit of pain along the top of my foot and through the arch of my foot. The second time around things have been quite a bit more painful. My therapist said that the atrophy has weakened the muscles, so I’ll still have some pain, but it’ll go away as I rebuild all the muscle. Towards the end of the day my foot is pretty sore, but understandable so. My leg has pretty much been atrophying away since May when I originally ATR’ed. My therapist all mentioned that the tissue around my scars is pretty solid, so starting next week he is going to spend a little extra time doing some ultrasound and massage therapy to loosen up the tissue. For now in therapy we’re doing ROM and minor strengthening.

My next re-evaluation is September 30th, at which point my doctor decides if I am finally ready to back into shoes or not.

Hope recovery is going well for everyone!

Just had my 6 week post op today and got the cast removed. Man did that feel good to have my foot out of that thing finally. I’m back into the boot for another 6 weeks. On September 30th my doctor will re-evaluate to see if I am ready to finally wear shoes again. For now I’m cleared to go FWB as I feel comfortable doing so. My Doctor said that as long as I’m in the boot I’ll be fine, but it’ll probably be till the end of the week that I can walk without the crutches.

I have 2 heel lifts and 2 half inch thick pieces of compressed cotton in my boot. I guess that’s what happens when you rupture twice in a 2 month period…there’s a lot of damaged tendon to be removed.

That’s all I got for now.

Went in for my 2 week post-op numero dos today, they removed the splint which revealed a nice “piece of art”. The re-rupture occurred just above the first rupture so he used the original incision again. However, this time he had to make a secondary incision as a relief so that he had an additional amount of tendon to work with. Not exactly sure of the procedure performed, but it was explained to me that it lengthened the Achilles so that he had more to work with at the lower incision.

Being that I ruptured first time around May 17th, then re-ruptured June 30th, my doc has opted for a tad bit more of a conservative approach this time around. I went from the splint to a nice new blue cast. I got to see my foot for about 20 minutes, wash it off, and try to move it around, however I pretty much had 0 range of motion. I got my work cut out for me in this recovery because I basically have to stretch my tendon twice the amount as I would have, had I only had the one rupture.

Anyways, cast comes off August 17th, two days before my 25th birthday. I guess that’s an “exciting” birthday present. I’m assuming that once the cast is off I’ll start PT over again. Back to work Monday! I’ve missed 7 weeks of work since May, and it’s weird to say, but I’m actually a little bit excited to go back. Sitting around and watching movies, TV shows, and playing XBOX360 has really gotten old second time around through this recovery process.

That’s all I got for now!

Well I’m writing on here because I needed to take my mind off my ATR and being that its 2:15AM, no one is awake… So I was about to fall asleep tonight when I moved then all the sudden got uncomfortable, moved again got even more uncomfortable, moved a couple more times and the discomfort got to the point where I started to hyperventilate, I broke out into a sweat, and I could feel my heart racing. The only thing I could think of was “I need to get out of this cast…NOW!!!!”. For about 10 minutes I felt like this and it was taking every bit off effort for me to not rip this cast off my leg. I know some of you are probably saying “dude, just relax”, but in all honesty, I couldn’t. I couldn’t get my mind to change thoughts to something else. I’ve never had an anxiety / panic attack before, but this was scary. I felt like the only thing that could calm me down would be for me to remove this cast. I finally was able to calm down by laying on my back on the ground in front of a box fan and taking deep breaths for about 15 minutes.

The good news is that on Weds the cast comes off and I go back into the boot and I’ll be able to remove that in case this happens again. I don’t know how some of you who wear the casts for 6-8 weeks can do it.

Anyways, I just needed to write, and this seemed like the best place to do it for me right now. All I can say is that I hope I never have a panic attack again, because I felt like I had zero control of my thoughts.

Chuck

My pain subsided pretty quickly after surgery this time around, I only used the pain meds for the remainder of the day that I had my operation and the next day. Until today I’ve been virtually pain free, however as today has gone on I’ve been feeling a dull pain in the middle of my calf. I’m kind of paranoid about DVT now, so I am curious as to what some peoples symptoms were before they are diagnosed with DVT…If this pain consists I’m going to make an appointment with my doctor to get checked for DVT.

Other that the slight pain and DVT paranoia, everything seems to be going fine. I can feel that things are starting to itch a little bit which tells me the skin is healing around the staples, however the itching is really annoying.

I can’t wait to get this cast taken off, however as I mentioned before, it’s a break from the boot which weighs like 3x as much.