8 weeks, a standing shower and 2 shoes!
On Friday I had my second physio appointment where my PT found a proper twitch on the Thompson squeeze which apparently was real progress fromt the week before where there was barely any movement at all. She then proceeded to ”massage” my achilles which had me sweating with the pain after only 5 minutes and having to strip layers the longer she went… She got me a heel raise for my trainer so that I am now walking around indoors in trainers, but still using the boot for all the scary stuff outdoors in the ice which has descended on the UK this week. It’s weird, I can do heel raises with both feet, but if i even try on my bad leg alone - there’s just nothing there. It’s as if I’m talking to my left leg and it’s just not listening. It’s hard work and leaves my achilles feeling quite sore, but my understanding is that this is quite normal and if that’s what I need to do, then I’m totally up for it. I also had my first shower last week standing on my own two feet - that felt soooo good. It was like being the “real me. ” I remember that 6 weeks after I’d had a baby I went to the gym for the tiniest workout ever but it was when I was standing under the shower - something i have done after excercise for so many years - that I suddenly re-connected with my pre-baby self and felt “me ” again. I didn’t expect to have that sensation again, but I did, after that first shower without crutches. There’s another mile stone on this long journey!
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Hi parisski!
Wow–congratulations–you are making such good progress. It’s great news that you are standing on two feet and doing heel raises! Showering on two feet must be heavenly. I was surprised to hear you say the massaging was painful…guess I was wishful thinking it would be soothing. But, it makes sense.
Your good news makes me smile.
Massage comes in many “flavors”, Rancher! Post-op patients often develop “adhesions” that PTs love to attack with especially deep massage, sometimes even with rigid tools! You are very likely to escape that problem and that painful (though often effective) cure.
ParisSki, I can so relate!! I’ve always LOVED my showers, and especially after sports. I’ve often joked, during a post-squash or post-volleyball shower, that I’m really in it for the shower, and the games are just an excuse! Like many jokes, there’s a tiny seed of truth behind it.
Heel raises are important exercises in rebuilding your atrophied calf, but they’re also to be treated with respect. Your AT is still “statistically” vulnerable to re-rupture for another month, and a few outliers here have re-done theirs even later, though that’s quite rare. At least one of our recent “return” bloggers re-tore his AT doing 1-leg heel raises too soon, as directed by his PT.
After my first ATR was healed well enough that I could walk perfectly in bare feet or shoes (at 17 weeks), I suffered a 1-MONTH setback, back in the boot, after my PT pushed me into doing a small handful of 1-leg heel raises. At the time, it felt hard and exhausting, but not at all painful. The pain came a few hours later, at the back of my heel (where the AT attaches to the bone). And the pain HURT, much more than the injury or even the surgery, and it didn’t go away for a LONG time.
The normal kinds of calf exercises should be good for you: 2-footed heel raises, with the balance between the legs determined by comfort and strength; 2-feet “up”, then slowly down, with only as much weight shifted toward your injured side as you can handle comfortably, and descend slowly, in control.
A good weight-lifter’s rule of thumb is that you shouldn’t do any lift that you can’t repeat X number of times. I was raised with 8 for X, though there’s a range of recommendations. When you’re vulnerable after an injury, you could use an even bigger number. More “reps” with less force should give you a workout with a bigger safety margin.
Another principle I like is to make today’s workout, on Monday, SIMILAR to the one you did yesterday, or maybe on Saturday. If you weren’t in trouble after the last time, you can be (say) 10% more aggressive and still be confident that you’re not going nuts. But if you add 50% or 100% at a time, or just jump into something aggressive that you’ve never done before at all, you’re rolling the dice. Yes, you’ve got to “listen to your body”, but you can’t assume that your body will “speak up” IMMEDIATELY!
Some call it a tightrope. I call it aiming to hit a “winner” in tennis or volleyball or such: You’d love to hit the line with the ball — PERFECT! But if you miss it in the out-of-bounds direction, you LOSE! So you don’t aim for the line, you aim a few feet inside the court, so there’s an acceptably low probability of hitting a “loser”. It’s a tradeoff, and so is your exercise regime. Play it 100% safe, and you won’t be gaining strength very fast. But play it too unsafe, and you’ve hit the ball WAY out of bounds.
Good luck. Your progress so far sounds great!
You say you have attempted the single calf raise with no result. I have just started two leg calf raises last week and it seems it will be a hard slog. I cannot even imagine trying a single raise right now. Good luck and i will be interested how the calf raises go. Paul