walkel’s AchillesBlog

I soooo should have written this a couple weeks ago, but recovery has taken up pretty much all of my days……But before I get to all of that, let me start from the beginning….

Like most of you, I’ve been an athlete for pretty much all of my life…..I’ve played several sports, but for the past 17 years, tennis has been my drug of choice. I must admit, I’ve always hated stretching (which may be one of the reasons this injury happened in the first place), and I’ve played on teams in High School, College and pretty competitively since so I’ve become pretty arrogant with the whole not needing to stretch or hydrate thing….It almost made me feel inhuman because I could last hours longer than almost everyone I know with little to no conditioning…..Let’s just say I’ve been humbled.

On February 2nd, I was playing in a Doubles league tennis circuit that my tennis partner and I have been apart of for several months. Not really sure why, but when we hit Singles we play so well and for the past few months we had been struggling in the circuit. Not this night. Our games, mine in particular, seemed to really be coming together and we were pretty much winning on every court we were placed on. Yay! We were playing a thriller of a point and one of our opponents sliced the ball short. (A big part of my game is that I am very fast), so I begin to dart for the ball and that’s when it happened…..

I ended up on the floor and didn’t quite know why….I knew it felt like someone threw a cement block at the back of my foot…..Like most of you, I looked back so I could find the person who Tonya Harding-ed me so I could give them a piece of my mind….Of course there was nobody, and when I stood up I immediately knew that something was wrong. I felt the back of my foot and I realized that “that thing” that was supposed to be there was not……I knew something was terribly wrong, and the first thing I thought was “oh man, I hope I’m not going to miss too many weeks of tennis….” especially because I didn’t feel much pain at all…..

I told the coach that I couldn’t go on any more - to the excitement of a few of our opponents I’m sure……and I told my partner that he needed to go with me to the hospital that second. Because it was my left leg, I did drive myself to the hospital hopeful, but prepared for the worst….

(Next post for hospital visit, surgery, and the beginning of my recovery….)

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