Post op Visits

Posted on February 6th, 2015 in Uncategorized by farnz

I can definitely tell I’m not very good at sitting around all day.  The few weeks after surgery have been the hardest.  Pretty much the same routine, get up, sit with leg elevated above my heart (which can definitely tell the difference between elevating above the heart and just elevating), watch movies, read book, review everyone’s blog on Achillesblog.com.  The worst is having to get up to do anything, as I get this rush of blood down my leg that just makes my leg very uncomfortable.  Not sure if that’s normal or not.

I ended up taking the Percocet for about 2 days after surgery, then had to get off them, they make me feel very strange, almost loopy, plus didn’t really like the constipation side effect.  I’m still taking the antibiotics (Cepholexin?) and have been for about 3 weeks.  I’ve had about 3 post op visits with the OS to look at the incision, he was a little concerned about one of the stitches and getting an infection, so that’s why I’ve been on the antibiotics for so long.  Has anyone else been on them for that period of time?  Anything else I can do to help with this?

So last Monday, I had another visit to the Doc office and we had just gotten a foot of snow over the weekend.  I knew I needed to be very careful getting into the Doctors office.  I took a long time to make it thru the parking lot, but successfully made it into the entry of the office.  Excited that I made it in, it didn’t even occur to me that the bottom of my crutches were still wet going thru the parking lot.  I started to make my way to the front desk and as I was crutching along, I placed my left crutch on the tile and down I went.  As I was caught off guard, I tried to brace myself with my bad foot, that was a mistake.  I immediately felt the pain and backed off.  As I laid on the ground, I felt this strong burning sensation on the back of the incision.  There were several people around me asking me questions but all I could think about was hoping I didn’t reinjure myself.  The burning sensation only lasted maybe 5 minutes or so, then it was just some heel pain and pain the rest of the day.  Is that similar to what other people have felt after a fall?  Good hing is it happened before I met the Doc, so he was able to check it right after.  He indicated he doesn’t have X-ray vision, but it felt like everything was in tact and I was able to put some pressure on it, without just the normal tightness.  I did open up one of the stitches a bit, so had some bleeding, which he wanted to keep an eye on.  He didn’t seem too concerned about my Achilles as much as the open stitch.  Should I have an MRI done or just go down the road.  Feels fine now, but just not sure what others have done after a fall.  He did take all the stitches out other than the one or two around the open wound.

Definitely getting tired of crutches and can’t wait to start putting some weight back on my foot and slowly getting off the crutches.

Surgery Day

Posted on February 6th, 2015 in Uncategorized by farnz

I was scheduled for surgery on 1/13/15.  I was to hear from the hospital the day before to find out what time I was to arrive, which I found very odd.  It was like dealing with the phone/cable company that says, “we’ll be there between noon and 4pm.”  I guess I wasn’t doing anything other than waiting for surgery.  I was nervous going thru surgery as I’ve never had surgery before or been on anesthesia.  I arrived at the hospital with my wife and after filling out a bunch of forms, was shown back to a hospital room.  Nurses were really great, got changed, they put the IV in and I was ready to go.  The wierd thing was the surgeon came in to talk to me again about the surgery and what was going to take place and at the end asked me if I wanted to have surgery today???  I was kind of shocked at first as I sat there thinking, I’m in a gown, have an IV in my hand, why else would I be here??

The anesthesiologist was rather interesting, funny guy that seemed to experiment on his own stuff.  He gave me two different anesthetics and I was out.  It felt really cold going thru my veins, which was a funny feeling.  Surgery was about 45 min.  I woke up in the recovery room like I had slept for 2 days.  Felt pretty good, except throat was sore from the breathing tube.  Leg didn’t hurt, so that was good.  Spent a couple hours in the hospital taking some antibiotics thru my IV and headed home.   Overall, thought it went really well.

The Injury

Posted on February 4th, 2015 in Uncategorized by farnz

Well, I definitely can say I wasn’t jumping up and down (literally) to “Join the Club” so to speak.  Like a lot of people on here, it happened doing something you love to do, for me it was playing basketball.  It was toward the end of the night, playing defense, went out for the block, then tried to take off running down the court…. But my Achilles wasn’t having it..  Heard a loud pop and felt like my heel couldn’t keep me up, very weird feeling, nothing like I’ve ever felt before.  I’ve had many ankle sprains, but this was different.  Went hobbling off to the side.  Luckily I was with a bunch of coworkers that were gracious enough to stop and help me out.  Headed to the ER, confirmed it was an Achilles injury, but wasn’t sure to what extent.  Was given a boot and some pain meds and was told to call the  ankle specialist on Monday (this happened on a Thursday night).  I decided it was best to call the next day, and lucky I did, I was able to get in on Friday to see the Doc.  He confirmed it was torn, but ordered an MRI to confirm to what extent.  Scheduled surgery for 1/13/15 so spent the entire weekend researching surgery, rehab, timelines.  This site was so amazing for everyone’s input and experiences, very helpful.  Thanks to everyone for sharing your stories.