- wilfus3 has completed the grueling 26.2 ATR miles to full recovery!
Goal: 365 days from the surgery date.
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- wilfus3 has completed the grueling 26.2 ATR miles to full recovery!
Aug
13
Almost 4 weeks post injury
August 13, 2013 | |
Now that I’ve got my blogging abilities in place. A recap of events. On July 17, almost finished playing tennis…going for a shot to my right and then I hear a “Pop” and next thing I know I’m on the ground. Left knee is cut and bleeding but other than that no pain. Couldn’t figure out what happened for a couple of minutes. Felt my legs and ankle, with my right ankle area a little tender, but no pain. Well, upon standing up, I couldn’t put any weight on my right leg, so I knew something was very wrong. Tried to go to the first med in our town, but they were closed for the night. So, I took 2 advil, kept my ankle area iced down and went to bed.
The next day, went to the first med, and was with the doctor less than 5 minutes before he told my Achilles was ruptured.
Doc made a call to an OS and I immediately went to his office. The OS took an ultrasound of my right leg/foot, did the Thompson test and pronounced that, indeed, I had ruptured my Achilles. Don’t recall much of the details of that first meeting with the OS, as I really knew nothing about the injury or treatment. What I do recall is that we briskly went over option of surgery vs. non-operative route. The doc really didn’t have much of an opinion either way, but did say that the both ends of the tendon were lining up real close together, so non-surgery would be a good option. I said “sold” and the nurse put me in a nice green cast with my foot in plantar flexion, gave me some crutches, and sent me on my way. Only advice was to not put any weight on the hurt leg.
Saw the OS last Monday, and I wanted to get out of the cast and into a boot. I was better armed with some info. Doc was adamant that I needed to be in a cast for another 4-6 weeks, and that he would be doing this even if he had operated on me.
I guess my persistence had some impact because we scheduled the next appt. for 3 weeks out with the goal of getting into a boot. Doc did say at our meeting, that this week, I could start putting some weight. However, after spending many hours the last several weeks reading blogs, academic journals, and normofthenorth’s comments, I decided to start putting weight on the foot, last Thursday. This would have been 3 weeks since the cast was put on. I’ve learned that it’s not easy to do PWB with a cast on, but I’m trying to replicate the UWO weight bearing protocol as best as I can.
Last Friday, after a good day and a half of putting weight on my leg, I called the OS office and moved my appointment up to next week. I also ordered my Vacocast boot today, as he was going to put me in the standard black boot. We’ll see how my next appointment goes (especially with me bringing in the boot), but as I told his nurse assistant on the phone when I was rescheduling, we’re going to have to work together with healing. It’ll be interesting to see how we go forward with his conservative nature and my desire to follow the more modern rehab protocols.
Comments
2 Comments so far
Sounds like you have a plan! Congrats on getting what you want from the Dr–you must be quite persuasive
FWIW, Bledsoe isn’t fancy but he gets the job done. Good luck at the Drs–hope that you can work things out together.
Your post made me giggle. Good for you on ordering your boot. I hear the Vaco is the best.
I walk on my cast. I wear a 2inch heeled sandal on my good leg so it really helps keeping me PWB in my bad leg. I actually really just balance my toes. But if I’m not wearing a shoe then it gets cumbersome.
Keep us posted and congrats on your progress.