First post!! Week 3 (Post Op)
Hello fellow ATR recoverees!
Quick background: I am a married 29 y/o male, living in beautiful Southern California. Active guy: love to surf, play basketball, ski, and just be outside.
Tore my left Achilles February 24th while playing basketball. Surgery on March 7th. My doctor is a Podiatrist and Board-certified Foot and Ankle surgeon with 15 years of experience. He said the rupture was complete, and he applied a dermal graft (Stryker) to reinforce the repair. Does everyone get these Stryker grafts? Check out the research: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21372317
I spent the first week post-op in a splint, with my foot pointed downwards. After the first week, my foot was naturally returning to neutral. My doc put me in a second splint, and last week I had my stitches taken out (2 weeks post-op) and was placed in the walking boot! I go back to see the doc once a week, and my week 3 check up will be on Thursday. Since I am NWB for the foreseeable future, I also got myself the sweet knee scooter, and crutches are only for tight areas or times when the scooter can’t be used.
Man… what a journey. I find myself in between gratitude for all that I have and will recover to have again and pure frustration… all I want to do is walk and go back to normal life.
I also have SO MANY QUESTIONS:
- I’m having these occasional “tense” or twitching feelings in my repaired achilles… anyone else encountered that? Feels like a quick cramp and disappears after 1 second. Is this normal/ok?
- Who else had these Stryker/any brand graft as part of their repair? The “augmented repair”
- Anyone else freaked out that their other Achilles is going to rupture? I think it’s just from the strain of pushing/walking/depending solely on that leg… i get occasional pinpricks of pain in that heel/area of my healthy leg before they go away. Doc said it was OK.
- When does PT start? When did you guys start walking? Give me some hope!
What a great resource to have here, and I so appreciate everyone being here!!
-Taylor
Filed under: Uncategorized and tagged ATR, cramp, nwb, stryker, twitch, week 3
2 Responses to “First post!! Week 3 (Post Op)”
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Welcome to the exclusive club nobody wants to join! Sorry that you’re here but the blog is definitely a good resource. Your story gives me flashbacks to last March when I ruptured my right Achilles - I had similar feelings of frustration and, ultimately, gratitude that I at least had a path back to normal (or a new normal).
For question 1 - sounds normal to me but I’d add it to a list of questions for your next doctor visit. I had all sorts of weird sensations the first few weeks after surgery. Sometimes it was little spasms and cramps, other times almost like electric shocks. And sometimes numbness/tingling. I just imagined everything was magically rebuilding itself.
2 - I don’t think I had any augmentation beyond the tendon being stitched up.
3 - Yep. Those feelings lasted a few months for me. Getting around on crutches and the iWalk handsfree crutch had my left (good) side stiff and sore on some days. Once I could do some PT work I tried to do the same stuff on both sides to at least feel like I was helping the good side along, too. I still think about this, actually, and a general fear of re-rupture has kept me away from sports with more explosive movements. I’m mostly running now and might try tennis again soon. It’s been hard for me to shake the memory of the rupture.
4 - I had my first PT visit at 6 weeks post-op, and that’s when I started very basic range of motion exercises. I didn’t have the best PT experience so I ended up doing most of my work at home and cutting official PT short. Hope you find a better PT place than I did! (I’m sure almost anyone could.) I was cleared for PWB at the 6-week mark and cleared for 2-shoes at the 10-week mark. I think 6 weeks was slightly conservative for PWB but given how touchy things can be in the first 12 weeks I wasn’t upset about that. Better safe than sorry in the early going.
Pjhalifax - that’s interesting to hear. On Thursday, my doc told me he wants me to wait another two weeks (will put me at my 7th week post op) to start PWB. That seems like an awful long time, but he is also a “cautious” or more conservative doctor. I’ve started doing very limited movements on my own, controlled and cautious (trying to circle my ankle, up and down, toe wiggles and scrunches)
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