4 weeks & 4 days
The majority of the pain of switching from cast to boot and from NWB to PWB went away after the 1st night of sleep. I woke up and could tell that the boot continues to stretch the tendon while I sleep.
It really was a huge difference.
Friday at work was fairly uneventful. Saturday at home was a different story.
Saturday was the night of my daughter’s high school prom. She’s only a junior, but we had a number of errands to run.
At lunch, we sat around and talked, and then as we were leaving, I decided to try to walk to the truck FWB. I had taken a few steps during the day, so these weren’t my first steps, but it would be the first time I tried a distance this far.
I was able to do it fairly easy, but I was not rolling up to my toes. I was stopping flat-footed and then bringing my good leg forward. Putting the pressure onto my toes was the painful part.
This shuffling continued through the remaining errands. At one point, I even left the crutches at home while we went to get her pictures taken. I shuffled around all during pictures, feeling pretty good… There was one point when I was bringing my good leg up that I hit a raised crack in the sidewalk that forced me to put weight/pressure on my toes, and I thought I was going to cry. I shuffled over to a bench and relaxed until the pain went away.
Saturday night I went to bed just feeling a little worse than normal.
Now it’s Sunday morning, and I know I over-did it, and not just by a little bit, but by a lotta-bit. I’m not too happy with myself for not putting myself in check yesterday. I should have realized that I needed to take it in stages.
I have a few errands today, and I think I’m going to, I mean I know I’m taking my crutches. I also want to ice it, but I’m a little nervous about taking the boot off.
Oh well, I guess it’s part of the recovery process. Learning to set boundaries, and being happy with small steps.
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(Stuart) Hugh - as long as you support your foot and lower leg then there is no reason why you cannot take your boot off to ice it. My doc had me writing the ABC’s a couple of times a day at 3 weeks post op. This is called Active ROM and you cannot put enough stress on the healing tendon to rupture it again doing it. Passive ROM on the other hand uses and external force to move the foot and I would not recomment that. Around your stage I was getting some tendon massage by a PT. The most important thing is always to have your boot properly fixed when you walk or bear weight. Elevation, rest, ice and a compression sock will help with the swelling. Hope the head is getting to a better place as well. You sound busy.
When I started going to the PT, I was told that pain when rocking forward onto the toes in the boot was not from my ATR but from joint stiffness and ROM issues in other areas from being in the boot. So I worked through it and it subsided. Some of the tightness is not all from where the ATR is repaired. If the boot is on right, it shouldn’t allow you to hurt it even if you wanted to.
Wait until you start trying to walk in bare feet again on a hard surface like tile or hardwood. The longer you wait for that, the closer your nerves and blood vessels grow to the surface on bottom of your feet and it starts feeling like you’re walking barefoot on a gravel path.
Don’t fear ice and elevation.
+1 to those. If the boot is properly sized and adjusted and strapped up, it should transfer all your weight from your toes to the front of your shin as you roll from heel to toe, knee pushing forward.