Rupture Rapture!

I’ll hit the 13 week post op tomorrow and all seems to be going well. My range of motion is really responding to stretching and just more general use of the leg. I still feel very tight but a 10 -15 minute warmup on an exercise bike seems to make a huge difference in advance of any type of PT or work at home. Folks in my office have noticed and comment that i’m walking more normal and with less of a limp. Mostly doing leg strengthening exercises (extensions, press, toe raises) with a healthy mix of balancing on the injured foot while pulling resistance bands with the other or, my new favorite, balancing on a piece of foam with the bad leg while throwing a medicine ball at an angled trampoline and catching it on the return. Another enjoyable one is just balancing on the foot as long as you can, then trying it with your eyes closed. You can feel all the little ankle muscles just firing like crazy to keep you upright.

Also working on a mix of everyday motions like mastering my form on small step downs. Its amazing to me that the body ‘forgets’ a motion its done thousands of times before, or the body is so afraid that it instinctively makes you twist the foot out or lead with the heel without you really realizing what you are doing. I had to stand in front of a mirror and watch my good leg step down so I could mimic it with my left. My biggest flaw right now is that I’m planting the outside of the foot first and rolling it down to the inside, or keeping the inside raised. My therapist has me doing some specific ankle strengthening to help plus I have to stare down at my foot while walking to ‘will it’ into the correct position. It also helps that my wife enjoys yelling at me when I she notices my bad form.

Hang in there folks - it will get better….

I had my 11 week appointment with the doctor and he officially green lighted me for kicking the boot to the curb. While I have more or less been sans boot for the past 2 weeks, its nice to get professional concurrence. In other news, I have now been to 4 pt sessions and my therapist likes what he sees and thinks i’m in the 90th percentile of the best recovery he has personally seen. He qualified that by saying I still had a lot of ground to cover, but he was pleased with my recovery. So what does that mean? I’m not as well off as some others I have read on the site, but at slow speeds I can more or less walk without a limp, but the faster I go the more I wobble. Starting to regain strength and flexibility but stairs and uphill are a challenge. I do notice improvement every week now and think the combination of PT and goal setting is one of the secrets. I’m excited about the possibility of more significant improvement over the next few weeks. We shall see…