Achilles Tendon Hell

Well its 8 days now since the op and my ATR feels ok. I still get the throbbing when I use the crutches to move around the house but as soon as i sit down and put my leg up it feels fine. I am completely off the pain killers for over 36 hours now and this has cheered me up as I hate taking pills. I took a attempted shower last night with a bin bag on my leg but to be honest it was really frustrating. I only have a half cast at the moment with loose bandage wrapped around. I have ordered a cast cover but I am going to wait until i have been back to hospital and have a full cast on before I attempt to use it.

One thing that is really concerning me is the pain i am getting in my good ankle/achilles now. I have never suffered with any form of achilles trouble in 20 years of football until now. I know that all my weight is now being carried by my good leg and my crutches and I guess it will ache but the achilles is really aching. I have rubbed some Ibuprofen gel into it and i keep of it as much as I can.

Did anyone else have this trouble? Should i be massaging/stretching it?

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Well i finally got up to date with my posts. My leg is doing ok and not in really any pain. Constipation seems to be subsiding and I’m nearly returning to some normality ( too much information for some people )

I had a weird feeling this morning I was lying in bed sort of coming round from a deep sleep when suddenly all my toes twitched at once. It sent a sharp pain to my heel region and made me bloody jump. I know the cast is in place and that i have restriction on my achilles from moving but it still scared me to death and sent alarm bells ringing. Silly really but it did quite shock me that my toes could twitch so much and so suddenly. I am also started to get that itching feeling around the scar which i would normally associate with healing and that the time is right for my stitches to come out but I now i have a week to go yet before i go back to the hospital.

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5th Oct 08

Well i have finally got down to 2 pain killers a day now and that’s to help me have a good nights sleep. I am glad really because the constipation has got a little bad. I have been today but I am far from being back to normal and the bloated feeling still has a few days to run its course.

I now only rweally get pain in the leg when i have to move about on crutches. I guess for the time i need to move from room to room or to the toilet etc the leg is in a down position so the blood rushed to it and i get a little pain but not that bad. As soon as i return to a seated position the throbbing subsides and the pain goes.

To be honest I expected more pain for longer but don’t get me wrong i ain’t complaining 

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3rd Oct 08

Well I am a fair bit of pain but the pain killers are doing there job. If i keep my leg elevated it is ok, I have read other people need to keep their legs raised above their heart levels but to be honest I have not found this. As long as i sit on the sofa and keep my leg on the foot stool I have very little pain. I have aslo dropped dwon from 8 tablets to 6 today and have had no ill effects.

You can see from the picture the arrow mark to show the consultant which leg to operate on…little worrying at the time that this guy needs a felt pen marker to help him out…..?

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30th Sept 08

I had a visit from physio and orthopedic therapist. They tested me on use of the crutches with a walk and also stair use and I was ok. I asked a few questions to put my mind at rest and then they told me I should be able to go home that night. Eventually I was discharged with a a box of pain killers and a bottle of constipation medicine for company.

I was glad to get home and get into my own bed. I slept better than i thought I would that night but i had taken the full quota of pain killers I could. I will try to drop the pain killer dose of the next few days but at the moment I need them,

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Well I had eventually got into hospital and my operation was due at 2.30pm. The morning went very quick even though I was quite nervous about the op the time did seem to fly. I eventually traveled the short journey to the operating theatre and met the anesthetist, I think he could tell I was nervous as he kept cracking jokes which I’m sure were to relax me. The surgeon popped his head round the door, had a quick look at my leg before briefly telling me what he was going to do. After that I don’t remember much.

I came round about 50 mins later and felt a bit groggy. The nurse told me everything had gone ok and that i was now in a half plaster cast. I was quickly taken back to the ward. I noticed my foot was raised on two pillows but i had to keep the oxygen mask on for a hour or so so could not really have a good look.

I slept well that night considering and woke up at 5.30am in a bit of a pain. The pain got worse around 7.00am and i asked the nurse for some pain killers. She went off to get them just as a emergency was rushed in………….she never came back till 9.00am. By this point I was in agony. The pain was quite bad but after the first dose of tablets it all settled down again. I stayed in the hospital again overnight and the pain killers did seem to do the trick.

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29th Sept 08

Well it has been a week since I went for my appointment with the consultant and I was told that I need an operation. As yo know from my previous post I had been put on a rolling list for a bed to be available for me to go in for my op. I also know that this injury is best treated within a few days of happening. So, it has been 7 days since my appointment and 10 days since the actual injury happened and I have not heard a thing. I decided to phone up my consultant, who I know has a clinic every Monday at the hospital where I will eventually have my op. I spoke to his secretary who was, well sort of helpful. She had a word with him and told me that he could not give me a date and that i should phone up the hospital bed manager to find out a more accurate timescale. I then phoned the bed manager and he asked my name and DOB, imagine my shock when he told me that he had no record of me and that i had never been put on the list……………………!!

To say i was angry is a understatement. I quickly phoned the consultants secretary again, I explained the situation and she said she would get the consultant to phone me back. An hour passed and his secretary phoned me back and explained that there had been some paperwork lost and that I would now be on the list……….! Then 10 minutes later I received a phone call from the bed manager telling me had got a bed now and I was to go in that night.

Some how I feel someone got a roasting over this mistake but I will never be able to proove it. I went into the hospital that night and no one could find my medical notes. After 43 hours of waiting on the ward my notes finally appeared and I was given the all clear to stay in.

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22nd Sept08

After spending the weekend in the house and wondering how the hell I had snapped my Achilles the time had come to go to see the Consultant. I got to the hospital and straight away my temporary weekend plaster was removed. I had never had any part of my body in plaster before and to see how they cut the plaster off was quite funny, a circular saw blade only millimeters above my leg without cutting my skin……. I was quite impressed.

The consultant examined first sent me for an x-ray to make sure no bone had splintered from the heel bone, then he examined the Achilles. Within seconds he told me it was a clean snap. The consultant then gave me the choice of a operation or plaster. I had already made my mind up to go for surgery even though i knew i would be very nervous about it.

The consultant then arranged for a doctor to examine me, I had blood tests, an ECG and signed my consent form for the operation. They were going to admit me there and then for the op…………!! Until the bed manager told them there were no spare beds available and that i would have to go on a rolling list and wait for a phone call to go in for the operation.

They put a half cast back on my leg and strapped it up. The cast was like a long shin guard that went all the way to my toes, I suppose the idea is to keep my foot from moving and causing more damage.

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19th Sept08

Well I finally arrived at the second hospital at around 6.00pm, about 85 minutes after I sustained the injury. I walked in to the waiting reception area and checked in. It was very busy for that tie of night so i just sat down and waited my turn. After around 45 minutes the pain was getting worse so I asked if I could have a pain killer of some sort while I waited. A nurse came out to me around 10 minutes later and gave me two pain killers. I had to wait till 9.00pm before being called into the assessment room. At 10.30pm I finally saw my first doctor. He examined my leg and then did the ‘Thompson Test’ on my right leg and confirmed that I had snapped my Achilles……………..I felt sick, even though deep down i knew I had to have it confirmed really made me feel ill.

I then had to wait for a orthopedic surgeon to come and seem me to run through the nature of the injury, discuss recovery times, surgery or non-surgery options etc. He eventually cam to see me at 11.30pm. At 12.30 I had my leg put in a cast from the knee down, was given crutches and then left in a wheelchair at around 1.00am.

Seven hours in a hospital A & E unit is really abysmal but what can you do, these doctors/nurses are up to their necks in it and don’t really have the man power to cope with the amount of patients they are expected to deal with.

After all this I have to go back on Monday to see the Consultant to discuss the options and to be re-assessed.

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19th Sept08

I was experiencing really bad pain now and every pot hole, bump and man hole cover in the road that the car went over vibrated through my leg. I got the hospital in around 15 minutes and I quickly got out the car and into a wheel chair. I went into the hospital entrance………..which was more like a ware zone. There were around 3 or 4 men fighting in the reception/waiting area with one of the men brandishing a syringe and trying his hardest to stab the others with it. Security guards appeared and tried to control the situation. With blood splashing everywhere from the injured men I decided it was not safe to be in that waiting area no matter what pain i was in so we quickly left. I decided to drive to the next nearest A&E hospital which was a good 40 minute drive in Friday rush hour traffic…………………………….and me still in bad pain.

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19th Sept08

It was Friday 19th September 2008 and I was about 25 minutes into a soccer match. It was a 10 a-side game between work colleagues from my old school. I was playing upfront (unusual for me) and I was waiting for a cross to come over from the left wing. I had stood just to the back of the defender waiting for the cross to come over. I decided to try and get in front of the defender in order tot get to the ball first. As I went to push off I felt it go. There was a loud ‘pop’ in my right leg behind the ankle and I immediately fell to the ground. At first I thought someone had tackled me from behind so I looked round and found no one was there. My second thought was feeling like I had been hit by a large stone at 100mph.

I knew what at happened straight away as i have a friend who had ruptured his some years earlier. The goalie helped me stand up and I just hobbled off the pitch. I sat down behind the goal and then took my boot off. I put my fingers behind the ankle and there was not the normal firm feeling of the Achilles, I knew at that point it had snapped. I was now feeling tremendous pain and felt incredibly sick, one of the PE staff came to my aid and said I looked really ill and had lost all the colour from my face………..she really cheered me up.

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