Achilles Tendon Rupture Recovery

While playing our weekly Wed night basketball, I injured my calf muscle in the same leg where I had previously ruptured my Achilles.  I wasn’t moving very fast, and the motion was similar to how I ruptured my Achilles.  I was moving slowly backwards and then shifted my momentum forward.  I then heard and felt a faint pop in my calf, and the first thing that went though my head was “crap..”.

I limped off the court and felt for my achilles.. and it was still there so I am hoping I didn’t do more damage than tearing my calf muscle.

I drove home and did a quick Google search for torn calf muscle, and it seems like treatment is basically RICE.  I don’t think it’s bad enough that it would require surgery, and I hope I can be “limp free” in the next couple of weeks.  I’ll most likely hold off on playing basketball for a month or two.

Well, I should have seen it coming.  I haven’t been getting enough exercise due to work/life, and I haven’t been making it a priority to take care of my body.  I’ve put on some pounds and playing basketball once a week in this state is a recipe for an injury.

I am all for getting back to playing bball and tennis, but I need to be smarter about it.  I shouldn’t be out there unless I am fit enough to play without getting injured.  Well, I think I’ve yelled at myself enough.. going to bed.

Happy healing everyone!

My apologies for such a long delay in getting the site back up, but there have been some technical issues with the upgrade. At this point, I think I am happy that we now have a new server that is more powerful up and running. I have postponed part of the software upgrade that was causing some problems.

One good thing is that I learned a lot about best practices on how to maintain and administer the website, so that I won’t have to take AchillesBlog offline for so long. I now have a second server that I can test the upgrades on.. and figure out some of the things that I have yet to resolve. In any case, please let me know if you see anything on the site that is not working. I’ll do my best to fix them as soon as I can. I also promise that AchillesBlog won’t be down for long periods anymore.

Hope everyone is doing well, and Happy Healing!
Dennis

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you had a wonderful day full of delicious food, surrounded by family and friends.
Although this has nothing to do with Achilles, here’s a NYTimes article that I found interesting. Enjoy! (Don’t pay too much attention to the first couple of pages, but the last page is gold!)


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/25/garden/25clean.html?pagewanted=1&ref=realestate

Hello everyone! Although I check AchillesBlog just about every day, it’s been a while since I last posted. So here’s my long overdue update.

I am happy to say that my recovering Achilles has been doing well. When I am running or playing basketball, I don’t really think about my left Achilles anymore.
The right Achilles becomes tender if I play basketball a little too often, but now days, I can’t give it my 100% because of my knee and so I don’t really stress my Achilles too much.

As I mentioned in my previous posts, it’s really my right knee that’s been on my mind. I went to physical therapy for a few weeks, and now I am doing leg exercises on my own to strengthen the muscles around my knee.

I must say that finding a good physical therapist takes more effort than what I put in to find my current (now former) PT. What I did was basically find the nearest PT center near work that accepted my health insurance, and off I went. In the end, I felt that the physical therapist was too busy with too many patients. I didn’t feel like I received the necessary guidance on the exercises and attention to my condition. There are some good guidelines on AchillesBlog on finding the right physical therapist, and I’ll definitely do a bit more research next time.

I am glad to see that people continue to visit AchilleBlog to support each other during their recovery, and so far, there are over 860 people who have filled out their AchillesBlog profile.

Some time ago, because of the spam blogs, I changed the blog registration so that it’s a manual process. I know that this isn’t a perfect system, and if I find a better spam check for automated registrations, I’ll change it back so that it’s a completely automated system.

There has been some minor changes to Achilles Profile widget. Instead of ‘123 weeks and 5 days since Post-OP’, it now says: ‘123 weeks and 5 days Since start of treatment’. This is so that we can accommodate people who are recovering via non-surgical treatment.

Norm had made this suggestion before, and I finally got around to making this change. If there are other suggestions on making the site better, please chime in. I’ll do what I can.

Well, those starting out in their ATR recovery, I hope you found a good support system here. We can all relate to most of what you are going through. For some reason, I found comfort in talking to others who really could relate to exactly what I was going through at exactly the same time, even more than talking to my closest friends or family members.
I also found hope in seeing others recover close to 100% from this injury.

So those of you who haven’t posted in a while, please chime in and fill us in on how you are doing!

I can’t believe that I passed my 2nd year ATR anniversary without even noticing. I ruptured my left Achilles playing basketball Feb 8th 2008, and I let Feb 8th 2010 slip by without any mention of my ATR to anyone.

Doc Ross, thanks for writing about your 2nd year anniversary! That led me to wonder about my ATR anniversary.
I didn’t even remember my ATR date, so I had to look it up on my Achilles Profile and read my very first post:
http://achillesblog.com/dennis/2008/02/08/hello-world/#more-1

How the time flies, and how things have changed so much..

Just a few minutes ago, I submitted my guaranteed application for the NYC Marathon, and paid the entry fee. (By the way, I haven’t been training very much, as it’s way too cold to be running.. and after much research, I don’t think I am going to shoot for the 3 hr Marathon.

So how does my recovering Achilles feel? Well, it’s still thicker and sometimes feel a little sore. But I feel like it’s stronger than my right Achilles, which I have a bit of tendinosis from all the bball I am playing. I probably won’t stop playing bball though as long as I am healthy.

Am I scared of re-rupture or rupture of my right Achilles? No, and maybe a little. However, it definitely won’t keep me from playing bball. I’ll be a little lazy on defense, won’t cut to the basket as hard, and settle for a jumper instead of driving hard to the basket. But stop playing..? definitely not.

It still amazes me that there have been well over 650 people (not counting the people who didn’t register to fill out their Achilles Profile) on AchillesBlog. It started with just a few of us: Tom, Doc Ross, Brendan, Jim, Johnskier, and others.. and I am happy to see that we keep coming back to check up on each other, and that the site is still a good haven/resource for the ‘newly recovering’.

AchillesBloggers, stay strong, stay patient, and stay positive. god bless.