xboater2010’s AchillesBlog

In 10 days i’ll be exactly 9 months post op. I did a lot of PTs that I know now they have helped very much. By the time I stopped the PTs (could not afford doing more), the championship was over, but my team kept on practicing, so it was a good opportunity to join them and work out my ankle on instructions given by my PT. So far so good. Then summer arrived and practices stopped. All I did was walking and double legged heel raises everywhere I was standing, went on vacation, did excercises on the sand but nothing much. My calf is looking better, but is still weaker than my good one, I sure can do single heel raises but not all the way up yet. I played some friendly basketball games 2 months ago (played appx. 10mins per game) and felt good. Since then, I haven’t tried running, but I am soon, as in 8 days we are preparing for the new season and I can tell I’m pretty nervous about it. I’m doing a totally different program from the other girls, as I’m not ready yet .
If I did this all over again from the beginning, I would take the PTs and after these, I ‘d do much more at home by myself. My heel reminds me of its rupture every single

I’m not sure I went over 12 PT sessions for either of my ATRs, but they were spread out, like once a week, with home exercises in-between. This time, I started PT around 2 weeks post-non-op, still spread out about 1/wk. Maybe a dozen visits total, but much more than 4 weeks coverage.

By 11 months post-op after my first ATR (2001-2), I was back to competitive volleyball, no holding back. I was totally confident in my healed leg, though vaguely nervous about the other AT — which did eventually pop 7 years later, also during a volleyball game. No regrets here.

Stiffness long after (especially) a surgical repair can easily be due to adhesions, where adjacent layers of tissue have healed onto each other and don’t “slide”. Many PTs love the challenge of breaking those adhesions free, it makes their eyes light up! If you see the back of your calf moving and puckering when you point your toes, that’s one of the symptoms.

Numbness might be from nerve damage. Of course, if you’re still getting swelling, then that causes some stiffness and something like numbness, too.

I’m on the front end of this (rupture 8 days ago) but I would still suggest you talk to the PT people despite what your surgeon says.

Its your ankle!

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