I got to take a bath tonight! Yea! After 3 weeks of protecting my wound and trying to figure out how to get one leg over the side of the tub! This feels like a huge accomplishment. I was weary of taking sponge baths and bathing in the sink. What I did…I sat on the side of the tub. I got my good leg in and turned my body to kneel in the tub. Of course getting out was a bit more challenging but I did it without breaking my neck. I had to put the towel on the side and kneel on the tub and swing my good leg out. It worked and I am no worse for the wear. I did all of this without putting any weight on my injured leg.

One other note for me to remember this milestone, I didn’t use bubbles. Slipping in the tub wasn’t an option I wanted to test. I also made sure I put the rug near the tub so I wasn’t stepping on the floor with my good foot. I don’t really know if my bath was legal but my orthopedic doctor said I could get the wound wet. I made sure the incision was still closed. I have dead skin peeling off the wound. So checking the incision before taking my bath was important. All in all a good day to day!

I am 3 weeks and 3 days post-op and still trying to find ways to accelerate this journey. I know I need to resign myself to the marathon race and not the sprint. In my efforts to maintain positive mental health and be productive, I went back to work at 2 weeks and 1 day post-op. I have no regrets about that decision. The problem is I don’t know how to move at a snail’s pace. I feel limited and confined in my office because I can’t get up and go. I am working and I happy about that. I use a wheelchair every day. I use crutches and I do a lot of hopping on my good leg to get where I need to get.

Physical therapy begins on Tuesday afternoon. I am looking forward to it. It seems like it will be a giant STEP towards getting my second leg back and I want that more then anything. I want to walk. I dream of walking. I think about walking. I consider taking the boot off and walking and YET, I want to be safe. I don’t want to re-rupture (lots of discussion on the blog about that recently). I don’t want to re-rupture. By virtue of making that choice, I get to take it slow.

Physical therapy seems like the silver lining for me at 3 weeks. I wonder what they will make me do. I look forward to hard work and pushing myself so that I can get my legs back and I can move when I want to move rather than when people come and push me. Physical therapy is a milestone. I know that somewhere in that process of the journey, it will help me begin to strengthen my legs again and in a due season I will be able to look back on this journey…I will see how far I have come and I pray at the end of this journey I will be stronger in every way, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Good Morning to each of you! I am 3 weeks post-op, NWB in a boot. I have officially been back to work 1 week today. Yea! I am thrilled that I have been back in the office. I open my school today and students will be in. My greatest concern over the last week is the swelling. Every night my foot has been swollen. I have iced it and elevated it when I get home. Today I will be standing - one foot (uninjured leg) with a rollabout under the injured leg so I can stand in one place. I can also sit if I get tired of standing. But with my foot down all morning I am concerned about the amount of swelling. Any ideas on how to continue to work next week and decrease the amount of swelling I have been getting. Very little opportunity to elevate and no opportunity to ice while I am at work. All suggestions and thoughts are welcome!

I survived the removal of my stitches this morning. I got a full release to go back to work - Yippee!!! AND I got my cast off!! My doctor said I could go back to work because I was ready to go back to work.

My instructions: No walking, No jumping, No standing, No WEIGHT bearing. I have my boot back on any time I want to walk any where. I have crutches and a wheelchair and I will be getting a rollabout by the middle of next week. Soooooooooooo, I am free - or maybe freer is better. Physical therapy begins on September 4th. And PWB will be granted in two weeks!

Here are my thoughts now that I am home and resting - My doctor told me this morning that he would have sent me home if he felt like I wasn’t ready to go back to work. Because I was ready and rearing to go, he was ready to release me. Despite the fact that I am free from the cast, he believes that by keeping me at NWB is a conservative approach. He said he wants me to go slow for the next several weeks and really give my Achilles Tendon time to heal. Soooooooooo, I am listening to him. I believe we have a give and take relationship. He tells me what he believes needs to happen and why and I get to listen. I tell him what I need and he says YES based on my willingness to obey his instructions. Mind you, this is a new relationship but we seemed to figure each other out early in my journey towards recovery. If I can help anyone with one thing it would be to develop a relationship with your doctor. Listen to him/her and then tell them what you need. I need to work. I need to be busy and I need to be out. That being said, I am significantly modifying my work schedule. I will work 8 hours per day and go home. I typically work a 70 hour work week. That is being modified to 40 hours for the next several weeks. I will rest and I will relax and I will take care of myself as I continue to journey towards full recovery! I pray my experience will help someone out there in this community! Blessings!

Tomorrow is my first Post-op appointment and I am very excited to see the good doctor! I desperately want to hear that I am healing well enough to go back to work. I want to hear that I don’t have to have a cast on my leg. I want to hear that I don’t have to lay around with my leg elevated for another two weeks. With all of those expectations my mind is trying to tell me that they are all unrealistic expectations.
I know this is a marathon race and not a sprint. I am a natural sprinter. I move fast even when I don’t have to. I know this injury is about me reassessing my pace in life among many other things and I know I need to slow down. I know it. Not because I can’t keep up the pace I have been moving at my whole life, but because life really is about enjoying the journey. In any case, I have a ton of expectations and a ton of selfish desires that may not be appropriate for my "two feet" right now and I need to settle down and let things be as they should be in this season…

" When life happens and you are forced to stop, it’s probably an opportunity to reassess and begin to embrace a new season. That’s my current status. I am laying on my back as I write this blog post. I was living my life and then I jumped up and in a moment – with a pop – my world has seemingly shifted and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, I have entered a new season. A season of introspection, a season of evaluation, a season of transition, because as surely as any season we walk through, this season will pass and a new season will be waiting for me on the other side. So I am embracing this new season…a season of stillness, a season of allowing others to HELP me, a season of rest (for my mind, my body, my spirit), a season of …."

I wrote this last week on my Leader’s in Training blog. You can read the post in it’s entirety here - The Value New Seasons . Since I wrote this post, the word seasons has come up often in my conversations with others. I am convinced that ATR is about a season - a change of season. For most, if not all of us, "walking" through recovery of a partial or complete rupture, there is no way that you can continue to live life as you were before. The rupture alone brings change in your life, even if you have a short season of recovery, with or without surgery, you are changed by the injury. The number of days to full recovery are not really what matters in this season. It comes down to the lessons available to us during the journey and what we do with the lessons.

This season of recovery will go and a new season will come; a new group of people will come through here - Achilles Tendon Blog . We will each shift into a new season, albeit scarred (for good or bad) by the interruption of this current season. But hopefully better for this season of recovery.

I got to go out yesterday! Albeit to the hospital, BUT, it was out of my apartment into the beautiful sunshine. My cast needed to be redone, and the doctor said come in. I couldn’t get out of my apartment fast enough. Just getting to go on that road trip was enough to shake me out of my funk and I feel like a new person today. I have new cast on, and I still have pain, and I still get to lay around and elevate my foot. BUT, I got out and it was a great day!

The only downside of my day yesterday was the doctor wouldn’t even look at the incision to see if it was healed. I was hoping for an early release and he would tell me to go home and put some shoes on and get back to work…NOT! But, one can only hope!

In any case, I thought I would at least take a moment today to share the residual joy I feel today given my release from my apartment. I have been much more productive since getting out. Yea!!! I pray all of you in this community have an AMAZING weekend! I am going to do my best to hold on to this wonderful warm feeling. I know that there are great days ahead of me and my work will be at the church when I get back! Blessings!

I finally get it that this process is going to be a long arduous process or journey. My last few days were harder than the surgery and the days following the surgery.

I stopped taking pain meds early in this process only to find myself dealing with more pain than I had while I was on the pain meds. My cast is loose because the swelling has decreased significantly. As a result my cast is loose. It slips down on the incision whenever I get up and move around. So my movement is extremely limited. That is frustrating. It compounds the desire I have to be up and moving around a little. Just taking my daily "walk" to the living room for a change of scenery is a painful endeavor. So I think long and hard about making that "field trip". Staying in bed for 15 days until my first post-op appointment is not palatable to me. I have to move around a little, without pain or less pain, even if it is limited.

Am I the only one plotting ways to get the cast off my leg? I have been thinking about it since the second day. Do I want to get better? Absolutely, but there has to be a way to limit my movement without me being on my back for a seemingly indefinite amount a time. I still have 8 more days of this "sentence" and even with my first appointment as a light at the end of the tunnel, I know there is no guarantee that I won’t be sent back to the "prison" of my apartment. My apartment has always been a place of peace for me. Not a prison. I would like to go back to the peaceful place that I enjoy coming to or being in.

I woke up this morning doing what I do every morning, I woke up praying. Yeah! This is an important part of my life. I am convinced that prayer is my only sanity. I need to pray often and long and then I need to fill my day with things I enjoy doing. I know this, but the pain, and the length of my days has made it a struggle. I felt swallowed up over the last several days in my frustration. I am determined today to choose out and set my day in motion so that I can have a different result. I am not sure what to do about the pain and the cast, but I  did call the doctor’s office for some ideas. I am going to stuff a cloth in the cast in hopes that it will keep the cast immobile and I can move without pain.

My apologies in advance for my venting but I have to get it out so I can move toward more productive thoughts. My life is spent listening to others going through difficult challenges. Venting through my fingers saves me from venting to others and at the same time clear my thoughts so I can make better choices. I know it is one day at a time, one hour at a time and maybe even one thought at a time. I am heading to the next thing I want to accomplish today. I wish you well in your journey! Blessings!

Yesterday my nurses (my two daughters) slept in and forgot about waking me up for my meds. Not to worry, I was done any way. I took no narcotics on day 4 and day 5 - today, I am off the Tylenol. Yippee!! I am not interested in taking anything else. The pain is minimal. It can ache a little and sometimes even be a sharp pain, but I can breathe them and I don’t feel the need to take any medications. Maybe once they start bending it I might change my mind, for now I am done with meds!

That being said, it is a Monday. Normally I am up and out of my apartment by 8:00 AM never to see it again until well after 8:00 PM or later. Not so today. Here I am at 12:27 writing a blog post in order to fill my day with some activity. I do have a rough plan. I don’t have time in my normal schedule to read. I will begin to do that today. There is a lot to read and I rarely have time to pick up a book, so I begin that process today.

For those of you like me who needed information about this journey of healing, the long days was something I didn’t really plan for. I expected to be in pain a little longer. But I was weaning off the meds by day three. I have to be home at least another 10 days, so I must find something to keep me busy while elevating my foot and staying put on my bed or the sofa until I get the green light to go back to work. Which by the way I am attempting to do on day 15 of this journey. I will keep you posted. If I can hop around on crutches for longer then a minute and they give me a hint that I can go back to work, I am gone. I am clear that I can’t over do it and the 12 hour days may have to go by the way side for now, but…I am going back as soon as it is remotely possible. I have every intention of taking it slow as I get back to the full use of my foot. So Post Op - Day 5 is beginning well. I will post this entry and move on to my reading assignment. Have an amazing day!

Yesterday was a good day. I decreased my pain medication! Yeah!! I rested well but I was bored out of my head. I didn’t even get a nap today. I have been up since about 5:00 AM and didn’t do much. You can only watch so much television. That being said, I need to find a productive endeavor while I am on my back. I do love to write. I have a few books in process, so that may be the thing I focus on for the next several days. I need to do something.

The other thing I must do is clarify expectations of others. There is a lot of food coming, plus a few visitors. The number of visitors is perfect. I don’t need a lot of people right now. I do need my apartment to be tidy in the process of people helping me. It can’t look like a bomb was dropped. That is what it looks like around here. My daughters are helping me, but they are leaving a mess in their wake….They can do better. I need them to d better. They weren’t expecting me to get up on my crutches and go see the rest of the place. I needed to look at another room besides my bedroom.

The pain is minimal today.  I have been able to move about today without much pain. There has been some pain but nt enough to worry over. I am grateful to God for the level pain I have but if the pain stays where it is, I can get through this over the next several weeks. .