I haven’t posted for awhile, because I fell into the roughly 5% camp that gets an infection from the surgery. Hopefully, my comments will help others that fall into the same category as me.

Diabetes and and ATR
I have been a Type 2 diabetic for about 5 years now and to be honest, I haven’t really seen it affect me until this ATR. No extra pain, nothing that limits physical activity, and no visible signs of effects. Yea my doctor does a blood draw every 3 months and the lab comes back with a number that has been “good” for a diabetic most of the time. There are very few instances where I have been physically affected until now. Even my blood sugar has been high the majority of the time there are no indicators to let me know that unless I do a blood test.

At my 6 week post-op meeting, my orthopedic sturgeon saw that I had gotten an infection and that had opened up a wound about the size of my pinky fingernail. 10 weeks and various different treatments later and that wound is yet to close. For the past 8 weeks, I have pretty much heard the one more week story. I am optimistic that this week will be the week.

I believe my diabetes has been a big factor in my wound taking so long to close, especially given its location. The Achilles is at one extremity of the body, and thus there already isn’t much blood flow to that area of the body and thus not as much “nutrients” to facilitate normal healing. Top that off with Diabetes and you have the makings of a very slow healing process. And the first time that I have really seen Diabetes affect me in a tangible way and not just a number.

So, in closing, I just want to say that I wouldn’t change my decision to have surgery again, but in the future I will factor that in as a part of the risk. I know my surgeon did bring up that my complication risk was higher because of my diabetes, but that was hard for me to groc, given the limited visible physical affects have had on me up to his point.

When I can finally go to PT and return to my regular workout routine, I am going to look for ways to further reverse or at least slow down the progression of my diabetes.