sacrebleu62’s AchillesBlog

My PT sent me to Dirk Asherman, MD, who (I later found) was thought to be the top foot surgeon in Maine. He explained to me that because my injury was “neglected” (or “chronic” - after a week or following the event), it was almost certainly going to require an additional tendon for length and strength. The medical jargon is “harvesting.” He also mentioned that it was possible that he would have to use an additional sheath for the repair. This would have been an “allograft” or tendon from a cadaver.

The day of the surgery was smooth, with lots of support in attendance. They said they hoped not to have use a nerve block (against pain) as that made the early recovery period a bit more hazardous, and they asked if I wanted a tranquilizer (I didn’t). As I had been told, you lose all sense of time when the anaesthetic works. And so it was for me. In the recovery room I was given a hydrocodone pill and sent home, with the lower leg in a plaster splint to allow for swelling. The surgeon had cut my FHL tendon and grafted it to the achilles. He said it went smoothly, with no need for an additional sheath. So far, so good.

Here I am, exactly 5 weeks after surgery.  So many blog entries have been useful that I wanted to share what I have learned, too.

Last February I was running slowly on a beach in Florida. Now, at age 69, I was well past my running days, 17 years past, in fact. So I felt the achilles pop, not very painfully. I could walk OK and even jog a bit. So I iced and heated, and more ice, and nothing much happened. I went back to Maine, the spring wore on to summer. The achilles was getting better, I thought. One day, climbing across a seat in my Boston Whaler, I felt a WHACK and fire in my achilles. But it had only been in the air, touching nothing.

My GP said it was achilles tendinitis, and sent me to PT. I had a great PT crew, and learned to walk right, so that eventually there was no hitch in my gait. Then, boom, I stepped in a hole and tore the tendon right through, as confirmed later by an MRI. Furthermore, I had a big lump below an indentation where my achilles had been. It appeared the tendon had rolled down, like one of those little New Year’s Eve noisemakers after you blow. Next: surgery.