22 Weeks - It’s been a while!
Hello all, it’s been a while since my last post, I guess that as you sink back into a more normal lifestyle the ATR begins to drift backwards in your mind. Last time I wrote I was at 14 weeks, and here I am 8 weeks later!
Things have been steadily improving over this time, visits to the physio have been every 3 or 4 weeks at this stage. Every day I have been cycling the 10 mile round trip to work and back and this has been helping my recovery a huge amount. My physio said just do normal stuff, continue to work on pushing off the ball of my foot while walking and the strength will return and more or less that has been happening. My calf is slowly growing, and now I can climb hills on my bike for short times while standing and can set off / cruise along out of the saddle also.
I would describe progress as steady and say that perhaps every 2 weeks I have made progress that can be quantified when looking back retrospectively. I managed my holiday to the Le Mans classic at week 19, plenty of walking but I took my hiking boots and did them up tight and all was fine. Every eveing my ankle was swollen but the achilles was all good. This daily swelling has eased off a bit now at 22 weeks.
The one thing that reallly bugs me still is a few times a week I awake at night with really bad cramp in my lower calf muscle, like last night. Although last night has reminded me to blog today, the pain was almost unbearable and it did not subside for at least 5 minutes, and still hurts today. I guess now that my tendon is healed the pull of the cramped muscle is no danger, but it certainly feels pretty horrific and sends you into a bit of a panic at 2am!
Looking forward, I guess it is more of the same, calf muscle growth will hopefully continue but physio says 6 months to a year is not unusual for normal size to be returned! I have no interest at this stage of returning to the badminton court, I ebayed my shoes as they were 1 week old and loaned my lovely racket to a mate at work as it had just been restrung and that seemed like a waste! Cycling and swimming are enough for me at present and with 2 young kids to entertain I would describe myself as ‘risk averse’ at this stage in my life to further injury. Maybe one day I might give it another go, we’ll see.
I am off to read some posts and see how people are doing, happy heeling to all and I will check back again soon.
J
2 comments July 26th, 2012