The Injury
Tuluksak, Alaska (a remote village) has no road system. You have to fly in. After 25 hours of travel, I finally landed at the airstrip via bush plane early Saturday evening. I’d been warned to wear yaktrax since the unseasonably warm weather had turned the village into one of the dicier skating rinks available & people were falling without the cleats. So when I turned up limping on Tuesday night, everyone I passed in the hallway asked me if I’d slipped. Oh no, I would explain. “We were just playing Sharks & Minnows. It happens.”
A middle-schooler had tripped over my leg, his foot striking my taut Achilles. I immediately snapped into pain-management/self-treatment mode. Rest, ice, ibuprofen, elevation. Since I couldn’t go to the doctor while I was so far away, I just hobbled around on it for the rest of the week. And around the airports. And through my public transit adventure, which included a 1.5-2 mile walking detour to cross the street so I could throw my heavy backpack in my car & drive to work. I’m sure none of that helped.
The next night I went to urgent care instead of coaching. It had been 8 days since the initial injury, but my foot was still very obviously in a bad way. They took x-rays & sent me off in a 90 degree angle walking boot (bad) with instructions to see a doctor in a week if it wasn’t getting better. My bad. Go with your gut. My gut said, “Bad, bad, bad, bad.”
Since it felt like it was getting steadily worse, I went to see a sports med specialist. Right away, he pegged my Achilles as the culprit & took a look with the ultrasound machine. There was very little good news: significant tearing, somewhere between a partial and complete tear. I had my MRI that very morning, but couldn’t make it back to go over the results with the doctor until Monday morning (4 days later).
Monday morning, the results were ugly: 2 complete tears, with significant tearing all over, including the more superficial fibers. The surgeon was down the hall & had time to fit me in for a consultation minutes later. After talking it over with him, we decided to schedule the surgery ASAP.
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