Introduction and day of the injury
MALE 29 YEARS OLD. PHYSICALLY ACTIVE (sports 3-4 times/week). RIGHT ACHILLES TENDON RUPTURE (ATR). PERCUTANEOUS / MINI-OPEN SURGERY.
Hi to anyone who may read this. I wanted to start this blog for two main reasons:
1. I thought it would be a good idea to document my Achilles Tendon Rupture progress/recovery
2. I read A LOT of the blogs here on AchillesBlog as I was prepping for my surgery and as I’m going through my recovery, so I wanted to “give back” to the community by sharing my story and any tips I might have as well.
So to start things off, here is some background about myself:
At the time of my injury, I was 29 years old, 5′10, 150 lbs. I would consider myself fairly active - exercising about 4 times per week (tennis, volleyball, running, lifting, etc.). For reference of my jumping ability, I was able to touch the rim of a basketball hoop with a running jump. I plan on making this my main reference point for my recovery to see if I’m ever able to make it back 100% from my injury.
As of today (June 24, 2017), I’m currently on day 22 since my injury, and +16 days since my surgery. With this blog, I’ll be covering the details of my injury, leading up to my surgery, and then documenting my recovery.
JUNE 3, 2017 - (DAY OF THE INJURY)
I constantly keep thinking back to the day of the injury and listing in my head all the things that went wrong. I was finishing up an obstacle course race with only two obstacles left to go. The specific obstacle I was at was a tall wall where you had to jump off the wall to reach over the top, and then pull yourself up over the wall to the other side. It was a type of obstacle that I’ve done many times in the past, but as you know (aka the reason I’m writing this blog now), things didn’t work out so well for me this time. I went with a running start towards the wall, jumped up with my right foot and toes ready to plant into the wall. As my right foot toes planted into the wall, my heel immediately came down and hit the wall - I instantly fell to the ground and thought I had pulled my Achilles Tendon. I limped to the side and sat on the ground for a bit hoping that I could shake it off and be good to go again in a few minutes (HAHA! I was so naive…). I ended up finishing the rest of the race limping through about 0.5 miles, which I now realize was a bad idea. Afterwards, I am very lucky that my wife was with me and she was able to drive us home while I iced my ankle in the car.
Overall, the pain level was not that bad at this time and I was still able to put weight onto my heel. About 3 hours after the injury, I was unable to put any weight on my right foot without having a high level of pain. Later that night, I was fortunate to get some crutches from a family friend.
As I mentioned, there were many factors that I think led up to injuring myself:
1. The obstacle where I injured myself was towards the end of the race. I was very exhausted by this time already, and I tried giving it my all on this obstacle. This was an obstacle that I’ve done before in the past with success, so I think mentally I knew I could do it, but my body just couldn’t keep up at this time.
2. I had already irritated my Achilles on one of the previous obstacle courses. There was a upside down rope climb that I was doing, and as part of the process to scale across the rope, I was hitting the back of my ankles/achilles on the rope.
3. I had a minor injury on my foot about 3 weeks prior from basketball, so for 3 weeks I didn’t do a lot of physical activity and I didn’t feel very “in shape”.
The Achilles Tendon is something that I really never thought much about before, but after going through this experience, I’ll be sure to be very cautious of it in the future.
