Pop goes the achilles

I had a dream about my achilles the other night.  I don’t know where I was, but it was shortly after the cast had come off.  The conservative treatment had worked like a charm.  No surgery, so no scar.  It was only slightly thicker than it was pre-injury.  Stronger!  I was feeling all around it with my hand; pressing, squeezing, poking.  Then I tried moving my foot around.  Up, down, side to side.  It all worked!  It was all good!

It was pretty disappointing to wake up to feel the cast still on my leg.  I must have spent too much time that evening on this website, looking at pictures of my fellow bloggers’ lower legs!  It was disappointing, but I also woke up feeling hopeful.

I’ve now got my head so wrapped around the Conservative treatment that I’m dreading that tomorrow the Dr. will say that I do in fact need the surgery.  At this point I don’t want it.  The non-surgical approach seems to be much more common in the UK (or at least it’s more common amongst the UK bloggers), so I’ve been reading many of their stories, and they seem successful.  I’ve also read some of the stories by people that have had problems with surgery (I feel for you, booklady).  

I’ve got about half an inch of space in the cast now, both at my toes and at the top of my calf.  I think it’s a combination of the padding compressing and my leg shrinking.  I started out just wiggling my toes to try to keep good blood flow through the leg, but with the looseness of the cast I can actually flex my ankle a little bit.  Very tentatively I began flexing my foot, first bringing my toes up.  I was concentrating on trying to feel something, anything, in and around my achilles.  Nothing.  Then I started flexing it the other way, pushing my toes down, pressing against the cast.  Without actually doing it too often, just in case I’m doing some harm, I’ve worked my way up to “full power”.  (Full power isn’t much, and yes I was a little worried that I would tear any connection that remains).   I can feel a wee little something at the bottom of my calf after I do that, but it feels . . . good.  Like a muscle after a good bit of exercise.  I like the idea of early weight bearing, so this is my version of that.  Maybe this is too early, but it makes me feel good.

I’m hoping it all performs as well when it gets a chance without the cast on tomorrow.  I’m assuming the Dr. will want to check it without the cast - he’d better!

Kate and Zander have been gone for 4 days now.  Friends and co-workers have generously taken Riley and Roxy out for some exercise.  Wasn’t enough to stop them from sneaking into the kitchen (from which they are banned) and eating a loaf of bread and a bag of pitas off the counter while we were out for supper though.  I accomplished a lot in the first couple days, but I’ve been enjoying resting and relaxing for the past two.

Good old peg-leg is my new best friend.  I’ve got the padding set up so that it rarely bother me any more, and I can get it on or off in about 20 seconds.  The return of snow to southern Ontario has not been pleasant though.  I’ve had a couple “whoops” after coming inside after walking/pegging in the snow.  I change my shoe, but it’s the same rubber pad on the bottom of the pegger and it has slipped a little on the wood floors.

If you like to have strangers start conversations with you (which usually happens to me exactly NEVER), then the iWALKFree is worth its price for that alone.  I went to the passport office to submit Zander’s application and had strangers start talking to me 3 different times.  Happened twice more getting groceries.  Most of them either had physio related jobs or had had their own foot/leg injuries, which explains their interest.

Now for the random part of the post: My TV watching has obviously increased recently, but they seem to be playing this commercial all the time now.  I loved it from the first time I saw it - literally made me laugh out loud.  Hope it does the same for you.  My favorite part is the guy putting the bucket on his head at the very end.

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