suthrnman’s AchillesBlog

I will give a quick update, since not much seems to be happening–”frustrating plateau”.

I can walk pretty well if I keep a slow pace.  However, when I walk in my best form there is always a little pain at the tendon muscle connection.  The swelling is still a problem when I walk a lot.  This past week I spent days at the beach and New Orleans.  In both places I walked quite a bit with no real issues.  I was a little concerned about the beach, but, other than walking in the real soft stuff, I did well.

The tendon itself is at least three times thicker than the good Achilles and I still have not reached full ROM.  Cycling on the stationary bike seems to help a lot and I used the elliptical machine last week which worked well.  As far as strength, I am slowly improving and can now push down on the scale as much as 90 lbs until the pain prohibits.

Overall, I am pleased with my progress, but the reality of the long journey is setting in.  At least I am able to walk around and feel confident of my path.

Blessing to all, pk

I haven’t been concerned about ROM too much, but have now started to quantify it and work on progress.  The last few weeks I have worked pretty hard on the bike trainer.  I am doing several intervals in a high gear; however, I haven’t really tried to stand in the saddle yet.  My strength as measure on the scale pushing down on the ball of bad foot is only about 60 lbs before the limiting pain kicks in.  I have pushed as much as 70 lbs when I was well warmed up, but haven’t been able to repeat. I really expected to have increased more than 20 lbs on the load test over the last few wks (I was at 40 lbs wk 8).