Achilles Tendon Rupture recovery by Feb 8th, 2009

I’ve hit the 6-month recovery mark!
I hadn’t played tennis in over a year, and I ventured out to play this past weekend on a dry, warm summer day.

A good college friend of mine happened to be in the city, and he brought his tennis racquet with him. I got to the courts first, so I took some tentative practice serves. It felt a little strange, and I could “feel” my achilles. So much for putting my legs into my serves, but I slowly warmed up enough to feel comfortable with taking practice serves with decent power. I don’t have the most consistent serve, so I wasn’t serving any worse than I did before the injury.
It really felt great to have the racquet in my hands, going through the serving motion, hitting the ball, and jogging to the opposite end of the court to pick up the balls.

By the time my friend showed up, I had warmed up enough to break into a light sweat. I carefully stretched my achilles on both legs, and we started to hit the ball back and forth. I made sure to not stress my achilles by making any sudden stops or abruptly changing direction. I didn’t chase down any really difficult shots, but I was fairly quick on my feet enough to get to most of them.

Another good thing about playing tennis with my friend is that we usually just focus on being consistent and keeping the ball in play within reason. So that allowed me to ease into getting back to where I was before the injury.

My friend was surprised by my mobility as he’s gotten used to seeing me limping around these past few months. I could tell that he was really glad, as he’s got his tennis buddy back.

I do feel a slight soreness in my achilles today, but I suppose that’s to be expected. I’ll take it easy for the next few days and see how I feel.

One step closer to full recovery!

Update: We have 61 votes! Please sign up and send in some more votes!. The most popular proposal has 2698 votes.  I think we need around 900 votes to be in top 25. Thanks everyone!

I have an American Express Card, and I received an e-mail from them about the Members Project that they are sponsoring. I am not sure how well known this is, but I checked it out and found it to be interesting.

Here is the snippet of the e-mail that I received:

It’s never been so easy to make a difference.

Whether you want to protect the environment, save our schools, or fund the arts, Members Project® is your chance to help choose which projects will share $2.5 million in funding from American Express. Last year, Members Project brought clean drinking water to over 3.9 million children across Africa. What happens this year is up to you.

Here’s how you can get involved:

1) Join the discussion. Find a project you’re passionate about, discuss it with other supporters, and help campaign on its behalf. 2) Share your idea for a project. Do you have a project that could make a difference? Share your projects until August 19. 3) Cast your vote. Beginning September 9, vote on your favorite project and help decide which ones will get $2.5 million in funding from American Express.

So, thinking about AchillesBlog.com and seeing first hand the benefit of online social network (community support) when it’s centered around our personal experiences with the recovery, I drew up a proposal.

If you are curious, here it is: Online Community Proposal for the Members Project

If you are interested in voting for this project, all you need is an e-mail address to register.
(You don’t need to be an American Express card holder .)

The project proposal can be modified until Aug 19th, 2008 so I am open to suggestions.

The deadline for the voting is September 1, 2008, but the sooner you vote, the more attention it’ll get, and the more attention it gets, the more vote the project proposal will receive.. you get the idea.

Thanks!

The AchillesBlog.com T-shirts have been a great success! I am delighted that everyone liked the T-shirts, and I am glad that I’ve been able to make them available at-cost. Thanks to your support, especially Kathy (kkdub), I’ve been able to give out T-shirts to some of you.
(If you haven’t ordered a T-shirt yet, and want a free T-shirt, please let me know.)

Here’s what the inventory looks like now:

I ordered 4 T-shirts total. One for myself, one for my brother, one for my sister, and one for my friend Jah who’s been really fantastic. (He is in the Picture Gallery.)

It was silly of me to not order one for a close friend of mine who helped me through some rough times during my recovery.. so since he wears the same size T-shirt as I do, I gave him mine. I’ll order a few more for the second print so that I can have an AchillesBlog T-shirt too!

I hope your AchillesBlog T-shirt becomes your favorite tee, and as Daveleft suggested, if you want to be included in the T-shirt gallery, please let me know.

I am curious if anyone knows how bad/good coffee is for your body.

If diet had no consequences on my health, I’d get up in the morning, have an icecream bar, chocolate, and a large cup of coffee with lots of creme. And then I’d wash it all down with another large cup of coffee with lots of creme.

I’ve cut back on my coffee consumption, as I was having trouble sleeping.  I just don’t fall into deep sleep, although I have no problems sleeping 6-7 hours straight.

Also, does caffeine effect your tendon recovery?

I’ll do some research and post some info here as I find out more about coffee and caffeine.  Please feel free to comment here if you happen to know a lot about this and know of some interesting references on the web.

Update:
Here’s a good article form NYTimes:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/health/05brod.html?em

So coffee isn’t bad for you after all. I drink 2 cups every day, with cream, no sugar, and no guilt!
I’ll use how well I sleep as an indicator to monitor my coffee consumption.

I am happy to say that my conditioning has improved, and I’ve been jogging periodically. It’s much better than the treadmill running.

This past Saturday, I drove into the city and went for a jog in Central Park. Now that I am living in NJ, I really miss running in the park. I used to live a couple of blocks from the park for several years, and I loved eating a small breakfast in the morning on a sunny Saturday, lace up my running shoes and go for a nice long jog around the park.

I wanted to run the full loop, which is little over 6 miles. My goal was to see how long I can run until my recovering leg started to complain. I ran about 5 miles, until my leg started to feel uncomfortable.
I could have pushed myself to run the last mile, but when I started to notice the soreness in my achilles, I knew that it was time to stop.

I also stopped a couple of times during the run. Once to ask why there were all these people lined up (Bon Jovi concert), another time to talk to a scalper to see how much he was selling the “free” tickets for. ($40) I went back to running.

I think 5 miles is more than what I have ran in quite some time. Even just before the injury, I wasn’t regularly running 5 miles, so I feel good that I am getting in a decent shape, and my leg is steadily improving. I have to say that I wasn’t breaking any world-records. I was running pretty slowly, but steadily. The speed will come with time.. or so I hope.
I now have a great deal more appreciation for my good health, and I am thankful that I am now able to do the things that I am now doing.

I do have some knee pain in the recovering leg, which I think is due to altered biomechanics of my gait. I am going to see a couple of podiatrists in a couple of weeks, so I hope to have some good orthotics to hopefully correct my gait.

My legs have been sore from Saturday’s run, but it’s been the good kind of sore. My achilles is holding up well, and I do have a slight limp sometimes, but I feel more comfortable bearing weight on it.

The recovery is really gradual at this stage.. Steady progress is the operative phrase for the moment.

For those of you following behind us, the old-timers, be patient and keep up the good spirits. It gets better. You’ll get there.