So my ATR story reads much like everyone else’s, happened while playing basketball on a sunday night, 17th of april, about 15 minutes into the game. I remember catching a pass, and probably twisted a bit and went to accelerate (details a little hazy it happened so suddenly), then thought that someone had kicked me in the back of the left heel! I fell over and clutched at my ankle and like everyone else, looked around me to see who had kicked me - I knew i was in trouble when I realised there was noone around, and everyone was looking at me with worried expressions. After the pain decreased a bit I hobbled off the court hopping on my good leg.

After dorsiflexing my leg and feeling a gap where my achilles was meant to be and comparing it to my good leg, I realised straight away what I had done. My partner gave me a ride to the hospital, where they took some xrays of my ankles, then waited a few hours to be seen by the dr. They performed the thompson test and confirmed it was an achilles rupture, placed me in a backslab and told me to return at 7am the next morning to be seen by an ortho specialist. The specialist discussed my options - surgery vs non surgery, they did inform me that there was little difference between outcomes of the two but maybe a small decrease in reruptures with surgery. Given that I am younger than the usual people that have ATRs and quite active, they recommended surgery and I was happy to proceed. After all, if i was going to be out for weeks then I may as well try and decrease the chance of rerupture! Another backslab was placed back on my leg and I was sent home with surgery scheduled for the wednesday (3 days post rupture).

Surgery all went well, complete rupture which was sutured together.  I arrived in the morning fasted and had to wait a few hours before it was my turn. I had to put one of those backless gowns on, they inserted an IV and gave me a dose of sedation before wheeling me into the theatre. The last thing I remember is moving onto the operating table, then being awake in the recovery room. They gave me fetanyl (an opioid) IV as pain relief for immediately after the operation, then digesic tablets every few hours - I have a few doses of this but felt like they were making me have shortness of breath and feel nauseus so I stopped, with my last dose in the early morning the day after my op. I was sent home the next morning with ibuprofen, panadol (panadiene forte if necessary) and blood thinning injections of heparin (clexane) to prevent DVT. Surprisingly I have felt nearly no pain throughout the whole incident apart from the intial sharp pain when the rupture happened. I didn’t even use any of the ibuprofen or panadol. Apart from the initial rupture, I think the most pain has been from those daily blood thinning injections I’ve had to give myself under the skin in the abdomen - they sting like a bitch! But each one means I’m a day closer to my post op visit and a boot with partial weight bearing!

The first few days were the hardest, for a few reasons:

1. Kept wondering why it happened, whether it was preventable, and why me? From all my reading, ATRs generally happen to people in their 30-50s, especially men. I am a 24 year old female who has been active my whole life and never had any signs of tendonitis, so this all came about very suddenly. The night of the rupture I had not warmed up or stretched much, which would not have helped, but this was no different from my usual routine (but lesson learnt the hard way!). Secondly, I had only started playing competitive basketball again 2 weeks ago - this was my second game in about 1.5 years, so might have placed too much impact on my achilles too suddenly. Although I did play basketball casually with friends prior to this, and played oztag (touch footy/rugby type thing). So I guess I had two risk factors for an ATR, but I thought my body would still be able to handle it since I am young. Eventually after a few days I learnt to accept that sometimes things happen and there was nothing I could do about it but stay positive and stay determined to heal completly from this injury.

2. The thought of rerupture or rupture of my good leg scared the sh*t out of me. I was so scared of having to go through this all again, especially further down the track when I was able to start walking again. Because this is an injury which occurs quite suddenly and without warning, I felt a bit helpless that I could not do much to prevent it from happening but strengthen my leg muscles, warm up well and stretch before games. After some time I accepted that this was a possibility, but that there was not much I could do to avoid it completely, and there was no point worrying about it happening.

3. I was about to go on a 3.5 week holiday to USA and toronto, my first big holiday since I started working 1.5 years ago. This trip was cancelled due to risks of DVT on long haul flights, the need for post op visits and rehab, and the inconvinience of moving around in a foreign country on crutches (hard enough in my home city!). This crushed me as I had been looking forward to this holiday for months, and initially I was more upset about this than the injury itself. Again after a few days I accepted it and am looking forward to making a full recovery so I can go next year instead!

So now I am 9 days post op, I have been elevating my leg above my heart religiously as I do not want any complications with wound healing. This means I have been mostly lying down with my leg propped up on 2 pillows (1 to sleep on, was too uncomfortable sleeping with 2). The first week everytime I got up I would feel the blood rush to my leg and mild throbbing around the achilles area. The past 2 days though this has decreased a lot, and I assume it will continue to improve until my post op check at 14 days.

My surgeon has already sent me my rehab protocol, which I was pleased about as it happened to be the UWO protocol. So fingers crossed I will have a boot on in less than a week and be able to start partial weight bearing - very excited! This means that I can at least get out of the house a bit and drive also (left ATR), and have some sort of social life! Until then I will overdose on tv series, movies and books.

A quick question for you all - anyone that has followed the UWO protocol, how much time in the first couple of days after being fitted into the boot were you able to walk? Did anyone have issues with their tendons being too tight to be placed comfortably into the booth with a 2cm heel raise? Looking forward to getting a better idea of the next step from here, reading everyone’s blogs has been so reassuring!