One week ago…

Exactly one week ago, I was sitting in the waiting room in the A&E dept at St George’s hospital in London, googling ATR recovery & rehab protocols from my phone and found my way to achillesblog.com

2 hours, and one week ago I was hungover from my work’s xmas dinner the night before, and at my Crossfit box ready to do the qualifying event #3 for the SicFit Crossfit challenge London Throwdown.

Consisting of

For time complete in order:

100 Double Unders

30 Knees 2 Elbow pullups

30 Hang Snatch 35kg/25kg

100 Double Unders

Since I can’t do pullups yet, I was doing a scaled version where by I did knees 2 boob followed by a jumping pullup.

I was about 60 double unders into the final set, when I felt my right lower leg get suddenly quite tight, I walked it off and kept going, then with only 30 double unders to go, I felt an incredible pain at the back of my leg by my ankle and heard a loud "pop". I thought someone had thrown one of the little "pain" balls we keep at the box for massage at my leg, which had caused me to trip up and that explained why I was suddenly lying on the floor screaming in pain.

We had a doctor in the box who was halfway through completing event #2 (Sorry Alex) who came running over when he heard the noise and assessed my leg. He said I needed to go to A&E straight away and that I had probably fully ruptured my achilles.

My trainer is also a nurse, and gave me the assurance that I would walk again when I asked her, and then explained what was going to happen to me at A&E.

By this stage, pain had gone, just a weird dead foot sensation, apparently I was laughing and telling everyone I was so sorry. Hang on, why was I apologising to them? Shock must have kicked in.

With the help of a good buddy and my partner, I ended up at the emergency department waiting 3 & half hours to be told something I already knew, then another hour & half for x-rays and plaster to be applied. Word of advice - if you get injured don’t do it in the weekend, at A&E’s busiest time.

I was weirdly calm, and accepting of the whole situation, perhaps I didn’t comprehend the ordeal/journey ahead of me at the time. My partner was more upset that I was, perhaps he knew how much help I was going to need over the coming months.

My foot was placed in a toe-point downwards position, and plastered up with the heaviest plaster imaginable. My leg was a brick, and made getting around on crutches very difficult and told to come back next Thursday to the Fracture clinic for proper assessment.

First Doctor’s appointment »