tendonblues’ AchillesBlog

Hello everyone,

First, I want to thank Dennis for setting this site up. I know it’s taken me a while to get blogging myself, but I have been lurking about reading lots of posts and collecting valuable information from the day after my rupture. I certainly have received more info here than has been supplied by any of the medical professionals I have seen so far. But more on that later. I guess I should start at the beginning.

I ruptured my Achilles tendon on Sunday, June 3rd playing soccer. I had one friend who had had it happen to him about 10 years ago and had heard a few other stories, so I guess that’s how I knew as soon as it happened that that’s what it was. I was soon to learn from the doctors that I am pretty much the “textbook” patient for this injury: male, of a certain age, returning, after a prolonged absence, to an activity that I had once participated in quite competitively.

The irony is that this was to be a low key, non-competitive, no-contact, co-ed, Sunday afternoon soccer group. I had had previous issues with my knees and was really trying to avoid further injury. I figured if I got hurt, it would be a knee. Everything had been feeling very good for the last two years or so though. I’d been doing quite a lot of yoga and had felt great (other than my cardio!) during the one or two pick-up soccer games I’d played in the fall and early spring. So my wife and I signed up to this group to do something active and together -like most couples with jobs and a young family, we don’t seem to be able to find a lot of time to be together.

I warmed up for the game. Perhaps not a comprehensive workout, but a jog around the field, some light stretching (including calves/achilles), a bit of ball passing. We played for about 30 minutes. I felt great all around. We took a water break and returned to the field. I was playing forward, my team had the ball in our defensive zone. I pushed off my left foot (not terribly aggressively btw) to position myself to be a target for a long pass and “fwop”.

I heard it, as did several of the other players on the field. It felt like my shoe came off the back of my heel. Which is actually what I thought had happened, but from my crumpled on the pitch position, I could see that my shoe was still on. It did not hurt terribly, but I could teel something was just wrong with my leg. My foot was floppy. I was worried about swelling, so I took my shoe and sock off fairly quickly. One of the other players brilliantly always brings an icepack to games, so I was iced and elevated immediately. Then at emergency within 30 minute. Where I waited for 3 fairly excruciating hours to finally see a doctor.

To be continued…

Chris

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 26th, 2012 at 9:50 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.