Healing long?! Can anyone help?

Hey team! I am 7 months post - op and making progress with my PT, but VERY slowly. My calf is still small, and I feel as if my strength is slowly coming back. About two months ago, my left (bad side) calf was 13.5 inches and is not 14 inches. My good side is right at 15 inches.

I’ve had two doctors check for lengthening, and they both said they weren’t concerned based on my dorsiflexion… i.e. my bad side is not flopping back when pushed and is just about in line with my good side. Perhaps a small difference.

However, the time that is taking to get my strength back as well as my inability to do a one legged calf raise is concerning for me. I can do one legged raises in the pool only!

Any advice on healing long or just being patient with PT and rehab?

2 Responses to “Healing long?! Can anyone help?”

  1. Tdance. I am several weeks behind you. I did just start doing two leg calf raises without weights. I put my hand on a chair and make sure to really lock out. My PT said to try doing on the stairs and gradually push more of the burden to the bad leg. With that said I checked out my calves in the mirror and wow not a lot going on.

    When I tore my other twenty years ago it was a full 12 months before I felt 100% or close to it.

    I hope this helps and wish you well

  2. If your doc says things are OK they probably are. Just keep doing the exercises the PT gives you and eventually you’ll get the strength back. How long it takes will vary based on how your exact surgery/recovery went. Since you were 10 weeks NWB it will take you longer since there was more time for muscles/tendons/bone to atrophy. For my right foot I was 6 weeks NWB and it looks like I started doing them at week 15 http://achillesblog.com/cserpent/2017/06/02/week-15-pt-2/ and by week 18 (4.5 months) I was able to do 8 of them. However long ago when I had an IT band injury my soccer coach told me that for every week you have to cut back on exercise due to injury it takes 3 weeks to get back up to where you were. That assumes that you aren’t being a total slacker. When you are NWB, by definition, you are being a total slacker on that leg so I would expect it to take more than 3 weeks/1 week off to get the strength back. So you figure you had 4 more weeks of NWB and let’s say it’s a x4 multiplier since you aren’t doing anything at all. That would put you out to 8.5 months before you’re where I was at 18 weeks. So keep at it! And doing it in the pool counts initially. That’s where I started doing it before I got the OK to do it above water.

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