Jan 18 2010
21 weeks
My recent progress seems quite typical, judging by others’ reports on this site. Regular physical therapy visits have massaged, stretched and strengthened my ankle, slowly but surely. During the early stages post injury, improvements came pretty briskly, less so in the past couple months. Right now, about 21 weeks post injury, I still have some Achilles tendon pain, particularly on days following vigorous PT sessions. The leg is still edematous (swollen) at the end of the day. If I do not think about it, I limp slightly, though if I concentrate on my gait the limp is easily disguised. Flexibility is essentially back to normal, but muscle strength is slow to return. I am not yet close to being able to do a single leg toe raise. Balance remains poor on the weak leg, too. I have frequent night time cramps in the affected calf despite extra fluids, stretching and massage before bedtime. That narrow spot in the repaired tendon is still there, but is not particularly tender.
Both my therapist and my orthopedist think I am progressing as expected. I greatly appreciate the reports from the achillesblog community, particularly those who are a just a bit beyond my stage of recovery, returning to the football pitch, or the ski slopes, or the basketball court. Your stories stoke my optimism. In fact, I just learned about a interesting professional conference at Whistler in March. I might just sign up in hopes of doing some spring skiing.
My PT told me today that the swelling could get worse as I get more active. And he gave me a compression tube that he said would help a lot. He just measured me, unrolled it from a spool and cut it off, so it is open at both ends and covers from above the toes to below the knee. Ask your PT for one, it might help with your end of day swelling. It sounds like you are doing great, I look forward to the day when I can walk without a limp.
My experience with those tube things is that they do not provide anywhere near the compression of the socks I bought at Wal Mart. The stores here sell two different degrees of compression and I bought both, but after trying both pairs I now only use the pair that provide the most compression. The other pair is next to worthless in my opinion.
Thanks, GerryR, I’ll have to give those a try. Are they “rated” or something so you can tell by the package which one gives the most compression?
The good ones I got are tan and the semi-useless ones are white. There were no other color options. There are numbers on the package, some kind of compression rating and the pharmacist said the higher the number the higher the compression.