unclebuck23’s AchillesBlog

After placing tons of calls to various orthopedic departments in our area, I set an appt. with the surgeon I decided to go with. Thanks to the achilles blog, I had a set of questions ready to go for him in my head. He seemed confident in the procedure, as he has been repairing AT’s for over 20 years. His experience put me at ease. Originally, he said he could get me in after the 4th of July, on Wednesday July 6th, which actually was my birthday. We begged and pleaded with him to try to get me in the week before that. I wanted to get to recovering ASAP, as my wife and I have a trip planned for August 9th to Antigua. I also read in some research that the sooner the surgery happens, the more successful the recovery in most cases. Every day counts!

He left the room to discuss it with his nurses and arranged it with the staff in the operating room to get me in on Thursday, June 30th! What a relief! So, that only gave me a few days to mentally and physically prepare for the surgery. It would have been tough to wait any longer. I read about some of the bloggers who have to wait for weeks to get the surgery. Thankfully I didn’t have to do that.

The morning of the surgery came quickly. I drank a ton of water the day before and fasted as directed. I showered up with the cleansing solution as directed and drove off to the hospital in the back seat of our 2011 Ford Mustang Convertable. (a free car, mind you!)  At least that was a pleasant part of the process! We arrived and checked in, as I anxiously awaited my name to be called.

Once the nurse called my name it was off to the pre-op room. The nurses were great and really kept the atmosphere calm and relaxed. When things were set, I was wheeled to the “staging room” to talk with the anethesiologist to talk about the options. She was a very nice indian lady, who suggested the general anesthesia. I asked her about the nerve block, and she said that often times it may not work and when that happens, they have to adminster general anesthesia anyways. She said with my health and basically zero risk factors, that general anesthesia was the way to go. That made me somewhat nervous, but I have been put under before with no problems.

Then the surgeon came to meet with me before I went into the OR. He said that he was going to try a “new” procedure that he hasn’t tried before, called a percutaneous, or minimally invasive approach. He would use an instrument that would assist in bringing the damaged ends of the AT together to be sutured up. This would leave little scarring and chance for any complications like infections, etc. I was thrown off guard by that, but hey, I let the guy do his thing. I was wheeled into the OR, gas mask put on, and I was out within seconds.

I woke up in the same pre-op room being monitored by the same nurses. Things were fine, no pain at the surgical site. Although I did have a few times where my heartbeat was erratic. That could have been a side effect of the anesthesia, but it was actually pretty scary. The nurses actually brought in an EKG machine to check things out, but things were fine apparantly. I was not casted…but put right back into the same boot I was given in the ER. Happy about that!  After some time, I was allowed to leave with my wife at my side. I was hungry to wanted to get something to eat quick. With food in front of me I actually became nauseous so ate very little. We decided to make the one hour trek home so I could get some rest. Let the recovery begin…