The one thing about not taking any of the medications is that you are keenly in-tune with every crazy new twitch or jolt of electricity searing through your leg at random times. You even start imagining what it means–like that tingling around the inside of my ankle just above the heel is probably just a stitch healing. The vibration rocketing through my lower leg is probably nerve related, the painful bag of rocks that just seized up and is now being wrung out like a towel is probably just the Achilles mending. You also realize how nuts the whole thing is when you are longingly wishing it was ONLY a broken bone.
But then there’s the stuff that is kind of driving you crazy because you can’t do anything to ease it. The quad & hamstring muscles you try to massage out but realize your efforts really aren’t all that effective–if you could just get below your knee. Then the poor plantar fascia that is seizing up just screaming to be rolled out. You forget for a second and start to get up to get a tennis ball to release it but then you realize, you can’t… and then the reality of the scale of recovery and rehab that awaits start to set-in.
But on the one week anniversary of my injury, rather than feel sorry for myself I actually made plans to visit my neighbor’s troops up at Walter Reed. Hard to selfishly feel sorry for yourself because you can’t run around for nine months or so when you are meeting twenty year old kids who have lost mobility and limbs…. in an explosion. They’re here stranded in a foreign city, many without their friends and family so again, it’s a good gut check as to what’s really important in this process. Learning to keep focused on the larger picture and stay thankful for the little things.
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Tags: achilles rupture, ATR, cast, plantar fascia, recovery, troops, walter reed
