keyoung74’s AchillesBlog

Just got out of my 2 week post op assessment with the ankle ortho.

I am now thankfully out of the splint and in an aircast with 3 wedges.  He took 2cm out of my tendon with a z pattern technique.  The incision is much longer than the original from the first surgery but the wound is healing nicely and stitches have been removed.  He did tell me that he honestly does not know why I healed long because the original suture was secured cleanly and strongly.  Usually there is mass of thicker than usual scar tissue where the ends of the ruptured tendon have filled in….not in my case.  I am not sure I will ever know why this happened but the only things I can think of are:

1) A fall on the crutches one day after surgery…I remember a small stretching sensation.

2) Physio that focused too much on dorsiflexion ROM at the outset.  This is a possibility…but he is a pretty experience PT with high end athletes….and has successfully dealt with this injury numerous times before.

3)Possibly too aggressive on my return to PWB during recovery.

The one thing that struck me was the language the surgeon used was “I improved your situation”.  I probed to get him to elaborate what that meant…..without much luck getting any more specific response back. I have heard he is conservative in communicating the outlook to patients so I’ll monitor.  I am oddly comfortable with this because I was not going to improve much with function or strength in my previous condition.  At 9 months I could still not do a single heel raise.   I just hope “improved” means a full return to the sports I used to play.

Rehab is a bit different this go around.  First of all I am supposed to start taking the boot off and doing 100 active plantar flexes a day. Going down as far as I can and then up to the point where I start to feel a stretch.   Second of all…although there is still no weight bearing while walking with crutches but I can stand with the bad leg normally.  This is much more aggressive than before.

That’s it for now…I return in 3 weeks.

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