Moving in a Better Direction
Hi All,
After hours on the phone we (my dear wife and I) finally discovered an OS that will move me to my fancy boot! He still is NWB for 6 weeks but does allow a boot at 2. I am actually beginning my week 4 on Monday and will move to the boot then.
He instructs to take boot the boot off and work on ROM each night.
With my Vacoped PRO I can actually adjust 5 degrees inflection at any point. The nurse practioner said that they put their patients at 90 degrees by week 4. That seems aggressive to me??
In terms of doing what I can I am pushing the ball of my foot against the bottom of my cast, moving my toes aggressively and flexing my calf muscle. i am also pushing the tops of my toes agains the cast as well. And moving side to side. That is about all I can do in the cast.
I am also doing leg lifts on my sides, stomach and back.
Does anyone else feel a line of pain down the inside of their thigh? Also if i straighten my lef i feel a strong burning sensation along the outside of my foot just under my heel bone. I figure this is just nerve damage. I have avoided straightening my lef though. Not becuase it is so painful but because I am so unfamiliar with how to deal with this.
I read through some of the re-rupture stories and I certainly am not pushing for that risk. So I am striving to be as careful as possible. It seems that they were really too it was just a bump in the wrong place at the wrong time.
At this point I think I would wear the boot for a year to avoid this again. I am sure I wont be saying that in 3 months!
I have read the different protocols that I have found here. One question I have is what exactly does PWB mean. Also, Weight Bearing as Tolerated. I think as athletes we are accustomed to tolerating a lot. That pattern makes me feel uneasy as this pain is not something that you just work through. I dont trust myself in this arena and am very concerned to rerupture.
I do want to mention that Matt Carrol the national sales director for VACOped really went to bat for me. He called his reps in MO and KS trying to discover who utilized the boot. Do i sound like an advertisement for VACOped? I am always surprised, appreciative and inspired when someone goes way above and beyond. It makes me want to be a better person myslef and do the same thing for others. Anyway, not only is the boot very nice and well designed the staff actually cares about the people using it.
Congrats on the accomplishemts, Tony!
I don’t think I’ve found a VacoPed/VacoCast user who ISN’T an advertisement for the boot, and the company! I’ve never used it myself, but it sounds very good to me from the reports. (Not good enough for me to try to grow a third AT, but very good!) And I’ve been sold on HINGED BOOTS all along, since I first used one.
Using it for a year is silly, but it’s a useful tool for protecting yourself in high-risk situations and still getting good calf exercise, long after you’re padding around your home in shoes or barefoot.
You say you “feel uneasy as this pain is not something that you just work through. I dont trust myself in this arena and am very concerned to rerupture.” EXACTLY!! Keep that attitude, and you’ll probably apply the right kinds of judgments. “Cautious, sensible impatience” sounds about right to me.
Nobody really knows what PWB means. Some pros have their patients push down on a scale to calibrate the pressure in pounds — but the target pressure (in pounds) is a number they kind of picked out of a hat, so it’s kind of misleadingly precise.
And it’s a sliding scale, too, because on Day One of PWB, you should probably just let your foot rest on the floor and “go along for the ride” while you walk on crutches, and a week later, you should be comfortable shifting some weight to it.
Then comes FWB As Tolerated — Heck, it’s ALWAYS “as tolerated” whether they tell you that or not! Usually the AT isn’t the problem there, it’s discomfort from the bottom of your foot (esp. the heel) that is. Tolerating intolerable discomfort there seems to run the risk of developing a lingering heel spur (plantar fasciitis), which is a Bad Thing. So you can stick squishy gel footbeds under your feet, and/or just take it a bit easier.
About the pains in other places: Walking on crutches is very unnatural and kind of strenuous, so it might well be “nothing”, or nothing worth a lot of attention.
When you say you “straighten my lef”, does that mean you straighten your “bad side” KNEE, or your ANKLE? I have no idea why straightening your knee should hurt. If it’s plantarflexing your ankle that causes pain, it’s probably a “normal” result of all the disruption that happened during surgery — or maybe an “attachment”, where two adjacent pieces of tissue that should slide across each other are “mistakenly” healing TO each other. (8.5 yrs after surgery to fix my first ATR, I’ve still got a tiny attachment from it. No pain, no nuisance, but when I look at my nearly-invisible scar when I point my toes all the way, I can see the top of the incision puckering, because something is “sticking” that should be “sliding”. If you have to have problems, that one’s ALMOST as good as being too rich!
)
Norm as always your replies are excellent and informative.
I mistyped lef for leg. i have been in the position where my bad side (left) leg is always bent. Either in an elevated positionn slightly bent or on crutches slightly bent. When i straighten out my left leg i feel a burning, pulling sensation that runs from my smallest toe across the top outside of my foot and around to the back of my heel. I will say once i keep it straight for a short time the pain subsides. it is not acute but it does hurt a bit.
I have grown a little concerned about the actual surgery. After the expereince I had with my OS I began to lose confidence that he actually did decent work.
I am probably overly paranoid and this is just normal healinng. As I am sure we are all focused on how this part of our body feels.
thanks for the rest of the informationn on PWB and FWB as tolerated. What a lot to look forward to I have!
It is helpful to know all of us are in the same process. Misery does love company and a sad face cheers the heart. This really demonstrates what relatonal communal beings we are doesnt it?
Thanks for the kind words AND the LOL, Tony! Your philosophical musings are not wrong, IMHO.
(I thought lef meant left, but it turned out the same.)
I like this post, enjoyed this one thankyou for putting up.
Very energetic post, I enjoyed that a good deal. Will there be a part 2?
my site: AntoniaMAken
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