Swelling and Wiggling - 3 weeks post surgery
Just as I started creating this post I looked at the calendar and noticed that tommorow will be exactly 1 month (yesterday was 4 weeks) since my ATR. I went the scene of the tear yesterday to watch some of my friends play softball (took a picture and posted it with #tornachilles as part of the tweet).
Anyway, I digress. My post is about swelling and wiggling. I have notied that 3 weeks since the surgery and 1 week into this cast the swelling has started to go down. That doesn’t mean its gone because if I dont elevate it above my heart - or as my Dr. said “TOES TO NOSE” - my foot gets uncomfortable.
I can wiggle my toes as my Dr. said to do for several reasons, one of which is that I had a tendon transfer as par tof my surgery and the Dr. wants me to wiggle my big toe so that I have strength in it when the cast comes off. As a result of the decrease in swelling (and my calf muscle has continued to atrophy) my cast is getting looser on my foot and leg. Which brings me to my question, when wiggling my toes yesterday I realized that unwittingly I started to flex my foot - dorsiflexion I belive is the term when your foot is flexed towards your shin. I feel no pain but mentally that worries me, so I have stopped wiggling my toes up and down for now. Anyone have any thoughts about that?
I found myself doing that as well, and never had an issue with it. RyanB cautioned against exerting pressure on the Achilles while in the cast, and I would agree with that depending on what you mean by pressure - the kind of pressure I was exerting was barely enough to squash a fly so I don’t think there’s much danger with that. I think any pressure where you start to feel any significan pulling on the tendon is bad. I had that a couple of time with nocturnal myoclasms (sp?) as I was falling asleep imagining I was leaping tall mountains in a single bound…those hurt a bit!
So my advice is - it’s OK to tap to the music, not OK to push and hold.
Flexing in a cast in the DF direction (”toes up”) seems pretty harmless/low-risk to me. You’re making some non-calf muscle tug on some non-AT tendon — this is the “opposite” muscle-tendon pair from the calf-and-AT pair. I.e., when an uninjured person clenches their ankle-and-foot isometrically, tensing their calf muscle without PFing (”toes down”), it’s this “opposite” muscle-tendon pair that holds the ankle still, against the force of the calf and AT. Going past neutral in the DF would violate many good protocols, but I doubt that your cast (or a boot) would let you do that.
Agreed. While in the cast you’re safe doing that. I did that on purpose along with some to each side of my ankle, but never down (plantarflexion).
I am five days out of surgery and l have been wiggling my toes without any pain. This first cast is pretty tight and it’s hard not to wiggle around a little to try to get comfortable as the swelling goes up and down. I go back to have this cast off in two weeks and start phase two of this process. I would not recommend the non surgical approach as I have talked to people that have tried this and it wasn’t what they had hoped it would be. The surgery links the tendon back together and starts the blend immediately.
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Ótima ideia, penso o mesmo que você.