More lessons learned in healing
So here I am, 4 months and 1 week post operation. What a summer it’s been! And in recent time, it’s been a season of lessons learned. I made light of this 5 weeks ago in my last post. But the importance of rest still hadn’t fully settled in my stubborn mindset despite my claims of over-coming this ignorance. After a few more mistakes made, I’m glad to say I’ve learned how to better manage the fine balance of rest and use of my achilles tendon.
The main point I made in my last post is that we’re all fairly stubborn by nature. Most of us that ruptured our tendon seem to come from active backgrounds. I tore mine while pushing my van, but nonetheless, I pushed it uphill with the thinking that I had superhero superpowers… and this stemmed from my bodybuilding background. In the past two months, I’ve done some stupid things outside of my physio-therapy regimine. Only a short while later, they are things I shake my head at. Taking a 5 mile walk 2 weeks out of my walking cast. Doing 30 minutes every day on a stationary bike. Pushing moderate weight on the leg extension, leg curl and leg press machines. These are things that are completely absent from my daily routine now. It didn’t take long for the reality of my situation to properly set in. It was just difficult because being sedentary, the key to healing, was the total opposite of my former self. And I should have known because the swelling was just awful!! My range of motion was patheti c. But a quick 180 has changed all of that because my heel pains/aches are vanished, I have zero limp, and I can nearly do a complete squat to the floor! Woohoo! Who knew that sitting around could make such great, quick gains! 
So these days I stick to my physio-therapy’s guidance and exercises. She is my God-send. If I accidentally skip my exercises and go 5 days without doing them, she expresses gladness. It’s opposite to how we’ve been trained in life. But injury rehabilitation in itself goes against the grain from our normal lives. It’s not easy to untrained what we’ve trained before. According to my PT, it’s a lesson she’s happy I’ve learned, and doesn’t see all that frequently in her patients. It goes to show that we are indeed a stubborn bunch.
I’m so thankful I have a desk job. My AT is happy I have a desk job. I have kids and they can keep me busy on my feet. Those are the moments my tendon quickly tells me that my healing journey is far from over. I’m learning to balance rest with activity. It’s an evolving process. I just hope my story can help those just out of their casts that their "sitting around" days are far from over. Impatience can be your worst enemy at this phase. Don’t learn the hard way. You can’t cheat your body’s natural healing process no matter how determined and positive your mindset is!
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Nice. Our healing ATs and atrophied muscles need work, and they also need rest. It’s a fascinating balance. Iused to call it a tightrope, but now I liken it to trying to hit a “winner” in a court game like tennis: You want to get it close to line, but if you miss the line, you lose.
I was also surprised how long I had to elevate to control swelling, after everything else (except calf strength) was back to normal. Some people escape that part.