I saw a new doctor last night, an ankle specialist. This guy was much different from the ER guy. He has a swanky office and seems to be more current on rehab protocols. He seems to be middle of the line between conservative and current. He had never seen the VacoCast but saw the benefits immediately.
He is still old school in many ways. He doesn’t think I should be putting more than 30lbs of weight on it. I demonstrated that I could almost walk without crutches and I can FWB on it. Regardless he insisted that I not put too much weight on it. He also says I shouldn’t start PT for another 2 weeks. On the other hand he says I can remove the boot to sleep, which I thought shouldn’t happen until week 6. So I’ll split the difference and remove it next week. For now he said ice and compression sock. The ankle is not very swollen, but it will help.
I feel a little better having having a doctor monitoring my progress. I’m still sort of flying solo since I’m doing ROM exercises on my own. Slowly and gently, but I think it’s better than doing nothing while the rehab protocols align in a couple of weeks. The original doctor wanted me in a cast for 6-8 weeks. The calf muscle would be so atrophied that rehab would have slowed down exponentially.
A common theme in the blogs is that you should be your own advocate, and it is so true (for everything really).