Cast is finally off!
Been a while since I last posted and since then, I went on holiday with my friends. Had an amazing time and the cast didnt stop me from dancing the night away everynight! At night, along the strip, many people would ask “‘What happened to your foot?” and my friends hilariously devised stories ranging from falling off a quadbike and breaking my leg to injuring my foot as I fell from Heaven (the boys loved that one haha!). All in all, an ATR hasn’t ruined my summer, like I was terrified that it would. I had my reservations about flying with my cast, and my OS offered me the boot for my travels but I didn’t really want to pay 150 pounds (240 dollars?) on a boot that I’d be wearing for one week then never again. So I popped 2 aspirin and flew without any problems. Although one of the funniest points of the holidays was definitely being wheelchaired around the airport!
I returned on Monday 2nd August and had my cast removed on the 3rd, just under the 8 week mark. My calf is so puny it’s crazy! No heel lifts, no nothing my OS just gave me a compressed sleeve/sock type of thing to wear for a few weeks and said to come back in a month’s time. He doesn’t want me to do any physio for now because he says physiotherapists have a tendency of over pushing patients and sometimes causing re-ruptures. “Choose your footsteps carefully” he said and I will because I do NOT want to go through this again and touch wood I won’t! However the tendon area does feel extremely tight and I am limping considerably. I’d much appreciate any suggestions for gentle exercises I can do to make it less tight and get a bit more movement going in my ankle!
The scar is neat, just a straight line but the amount of dry skin was actually traumatising! The first place my mum took me from the hospital was the nail salon for a MUCH needed pedicure!
I’m currently in Turkey on a family vacation! My parent’s are thinking of booking me in for one of the hotel’s sports massages and I’m definitely planning on soaking up a lot in the Jacuzzi because the one place my tendon feels good is in warm water!
Filed under Uncategorized |8 Responses to “Cast is finally off!”
Leave a Reply
Your summer sounds neat, K — but almost 8 weeks in a series of casts is way (too) long! You SHOULD be limping, and seriously watching your step, too, because you’re much more vulnerable now than you’ve been. And your leg has lost a lot more than just calf mass, too. All the muscles and tendons and ligaments that make your ankle “work” have had a LONG holiday, and have forgotten how to do their jobs.
If I were you, I’d look at bit.ly/UWOProtocol, and try to follow the exercises starting from right near the beginning (at their 2 weeks), and catch up only gradually. Maybe make every week count for 2, or maybe 3, in advancing through the steps. I’d avoid moves that combine stretching with weight-bearing — I’d do them both, but not together, at least for a couple of weeks.
Working in a pool is excellent, but don’t go springing off the bottom into a dive, ’cause that could easily be too much. Any normal stretch — foot in the air — that you do with your own leg muscles (”active”) is probably safe, and GENTLE stretches with external pressure applied (”passive”) probably are OK, or soon will be.
Keep your toe way out over air when you walk down stairs, and start walking with your right foot in front of your left, gradually bringing it back only when it feels good to do so — not “no pain no gain”, not “working through it”, but “feels good”!
I think you’ll find that you progress pretty quickly from here on, and I think you’ll enjoy the “steps”.
HI Kristy,
I have also ruptured my achilles playing tennis. Poor you! You are doing so well, your story is very encouraging for me too. I am 30 (which must feel ancient to you, but like you, I am also quite young in comparison to many people who experience this kind of nightmare).
Your mum sounds amazing! Pedicures are awesome and such a great idea, go mum! I am totally going to have one too. I am due to come out of the aircast boot on Monday (9th Aug) at 8 1/2 week post-op and I can’t wait.
Good luck to you!
Andreea
Thanks for the tips Norm, I’ve saved a copy of the protocol for inspiration for exercises as well as one I saw posted by I think it was Dennis! My walks improved a lot over the last few days, I’ve just been taking it slow and very carefully trying to be as accurate as I can with my movement!
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ‘0 which is not a hashcash value.
Hey Andreea, I’m so glad to be of any encouragement, it’s really important that we can all share in our experiences together. Haha 30’s definitely young to me! And the good thing about young ones like us is that we should hopefully heal and progress a bit faster than the average ATR sufferers, or so I’ve been told! Best of luck for Monday and enjoy your much deserved pedicure
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ‘0 which is not a hashcash value.
Hi everyone,
ruptured my left AT playing softball (running hard, pushed off, then pop)
Decided to go non-surgical and preliminary ultrasound seems to indicate i am a good candidate.
Looking for thoughts on:
Plaster cast vs air brace vs ??
If plaster cast, how long?
thanks (great site)
brad
Cast is a non-starter, boot a must, period. “AirCast” boot is OK, and was used in the largest study (at U. W. Ontario = UWO) that showed that a fast non-op protocol produces results as good as surgery, minus the surgical complications. Wikipedia ATR article ref. 7. (Refs 4-6 are the other recent studies that showed the same results.) Older, slower, “conservative” non-op protocols produced lousy results, including high re-rupture rates, so Don’t Go There!
The UWO protocol (which I followed) is posted at bit.ly/UWOProtocol . Going slower is hazardous to your AT, and a bigger nuisance, too. Show it to your Doc if he’s planning to immobilize you NWB for more than 2 weeks, or delay PT for longer than 2 weeks. Ask him (in the nicest possible way, but clearly and firmly) what successful study HIS protocol is based on.
Personally, I’d get a hinged boot, rather than a fixed boot like the AirCast. Hinged boots can be locked “fixed” (and probably should be for the first few weeks), but fixed boots can’t hinge, which is a great way to exercise safely after a month or so. Users of the VacoCast hinged boot all love it.
BTW, once you’ve torn your AT by over-stressing it, you’re automatically a good candidate for a modern non-op protocol. The only (smallish) study that compared ultrasound results (like AT gap size) with non-op results 6 months later found NO relationship! All the studies were done on FULL ruptures, too, so Docs who say that only partial ruptures should go non-op haven’t read (or understood) the best and latest studies. There’s a lot of that fuzzy-headedness going around in medicine, same as most other professions.
And please start a blog to share your details and our questions and answers in one place.
hi all,
5 th week in a light cast now after rupturing my tendon in a game of hide n seek with the local bobbies lol,
i took the non op route(but on reflection i wish i had chosen the surgery)
ive had 2 cast changes and my fott repositioned. its still very painful, but worse, my”good achilles feels like its about to pop, due to all the hopping about and crutch work. i have one more week till i see the consultant but i think the answer is still surgery doh
Why are the out-to-lunch, old-fashioned doctors with the slow “conservative” protocols, in such a rush to change their patients’ ankle angle towards neutral? I don’t get it.
The UWO protocol goes faster without surgery than most patients go with surgery, but the ankle stays plantar-flexed for a full 6 weeks, long after FWB starts. That makes sense to me.
Furthermore, based on my experience and the reports here, when the changes in angle are well timed, there is generally no discomfort, no serious stretch. Many patients feel relief or improvement when a heel wedge is removed — which might mean that it should have happened a bit SOONER.
5 weeks of NWB isn’t helpful to your ankle or anything else, and isn’t supported by the evidence, with or without surgery.
Why are you wishing you’d had the surgery? Have you looked at the 4 post-2007 studies that all showed that surgical patients have no better strength, ROM, or re-rupture rates than non-surgical patients, they just have higher rates of complications and infections? (They’re refs 4-7 in the Wikipedia article on ATR.)
Mind you, those studies all used good modern protocols, not 6 weeks of NWB in a light cast!
If you can start soon to slide toward the schedule that UWO used (and lose the casts and get into a boot, and PT), you should be able to catch up by 10 or 12 weeks.
Many ATR patients get nervous about their “good” AT while hopping around on crutches, but almost nobody actually tears it. AFTER you return to aggressive sports, is another matter, but not usually while you’re in rehab.