May 25th 2010 - 3 Weeks post-op

I had to go in for early morning PT this morning at 7am. Just did some more basic stretches and added in a few very light strengthening exercises. Good bye crutches!!! Got the ok to begin some more weight bearing and could walk as long as I keep my aircast on. I have to walk pretty slow, but anything beats carting around those crutches. I have another PT appointment on the 27th, but probably won't have any new changes until my 4 week visit next week.

here are a couple of pictures. the scabbing has started to come off of the upper part of the incision and is healing up nicely. in the second picture, i'm only putting enough weight on my right leg to flex the calf muscle--or what used to be the calf muscle, anyway...lol.

May 20th, 2010 - Physical Therapy begins

Today I had my first physical therapy appointment. During the appointment, they basically did an evaluation for my range of motion, strength and pain threshold. The PT did some massaging of my achilles, as it had not been moved around since the surgery. There was some scar tissue that had formed, and the massaging of the area breaks down that scar tissue and alleviates some of the stiffness. The massaging was almost painful to a point, but afterwards it felt much better than it had before. Next he had me do some basic exercises--I had to use a belt while sitting up and hold it around my foot, then gently pull and stretch the achilles. I had to hold this for 30 seconds 5 times, with a 5 second break in between. I then had to do the same exercise with my leg bent at a 45 degree angle. Next he had me point my foot as far as I could, then pull it back as far as I could. I had to do this 25 times. Then I had to rotate my foot in as full of a circle as I could 25 times clockwise then 25 times counter-clockwise. The last thing he did was have me lay on my stomach and looped a theraband around a leg of the table and the end of my foot. There was a gentle stretch for 6 minutes. The more relaxed I let my foot get, the more it pulled, and after about 4.5 minutes it became uncomfortable. This was the final exercise of the day.





My therapist wanted to wait another week before beginning any strengthening exercises. My right calf has become very weak, as you can see in this picture.

This picture was taken from an offset angle, so it makes it look worse than it really is, but trust me, it's pretty obvious how much smaller my right calf is than my left.

At the end of the appointment, I was told I could move to some weight bearing, but no more then 25%--basically the weight of my leg. I'm pretty sick of crutching around everywhere at this point, so I can't wait until they tell me I can lose the sticks!!!!!!!

May 17th - 2 weeks post-op - Staples out!!

Today I had my two weeks follow up (13 days) from my surgery on the 4th. I finally got the staples out!! I had 18 staples holding my incision together, and they were removed one at a time. Some were more painful than others, but for the most part it just felt like some pressure and then a slight bee sting. Although having 18 bee stings right in a row was not very pleasant, I felt immediate relief of pressure after they were removed.

The orthopedist said that the healing and swelling both looked very good, and a consultation for physical therapy was scheduled.

Here is the first picture I took after the staples were removed

May 11th 2010 - 1 Week post-op appointment

Today I had a check up with my Ortho to see how things were going. I went to work in the morning, and my appointment was during my lunch. There was good and bad that came out of this appointment. The bad was that my staples were not ready to come out--that has truly been the most uncomfortable part of this whole thing so far. Other bad news was that there was some excessive swelling, most likely due being up and about with the boys the weekend before and not being able to keep it elevated properly while at work. Dr. Leonard suggested that if I could, I should take the rest of the week off of work and really concentrate on doing nothing but letting my leg recover. He explained how much natural energy the body uses while trying to heal something that is damaged and said he felt I was simply doing too much too soon. The good news is that all of my bandages were changed to fresh new ones, and I was able to get out of the fiberglass splint and into a heavier but much more comfortable Aircast boot.

Looks pretty serious but is actually pretty comfortable, much more so than a fiberblass splint wrapped with half a dozen ace bandages!! I was still restricted to put no weight on it and remained on crutches, and unfortunately because the staples had to stay for at least a few more days, I was still unable to take a shower, so one more week of baths for me!!

May 10th 2010 - Back to Work

Today I went back to work for the first time since my injury. I got into the office around 9am and was able to make it through the majority of the day with little pain. I work in an office setting, so most of my day involves sitting at a desk, working on my computer and phone. I have not taken any pain medication for a day and a half now, and I can really start to feel some of the post-op discomfort that was explained to me from day 1. After lunch, there was some noticeable throbbing, most likely from not being able to properly elevate my leg while working. I made it until around 3:30pm at work, and at that point I was just too uncomfortable to stay. I went home to prop my leg back up, and actually felt much better once I was able to do this.

It was at this point when I began to get a little upset with the reality of my situation. I expected to get back to work after a week off and have everything be just fine. It now started to hit me about how limited my activities were going to be for a while, about how long the road to a full recovery was going to be, and it got me pretty frustrated. I've always been an active person, and have been relatively injury free my whole life. To have something like this happen right as the weather is getting warmer and the summer is just around the corner was devastating to think about. All I was focusing on was what I will be missing out on and because this injury is different for everyone, I really had no realistic timeframe to look at to draw any sort of light at the end of the tunnel.

It was this day that I got online and really started looking for info about my injury. I read medical journals, e-zines written by physical therapists about achilles recover, and found a few blogs from people that had experienced this injury first hand. This is where I was able to find some solace and really began to focus on the fact that things were eventually going to be ok. I read blog after blog about people that pushed themselves too hard and ended up having to go back through surgery 9 months to a year later. I read about those that took things slow and were able to make a full recovery within a reasonable time frame. All of these stories of people that had experienced what I was going through was really what picked me back up, gave me some time to think about what kind of goals I wanted to set, and really made me see that this injury was really not the worst thing that have could happened.

May 7th 2010 - Trip to Hershey PA

Several weeks before my injury I had made plans with my parents to head out to Hershey, PA to see my boys. They both had baseball games this weekend and Brendan had a soccer game as well. I certainly wasn't going to let my injury keep me from seeing my boys, so we packed up dad's Tahoe and made the trip out there. As of Friday, I was still taking some of the pain medication, but taking it while driving in the car started to make me a bit queasy, so I tried to reduce the amount I was taking. Still had to take the meds to fall asleep at night, but I was able to tolerate the pain throughout the day for the most part. I crutched and was carted around all weekend, and was able to see both boys play baseball and able to get to Brendan's soccer game as well. Aside from their games and a Sunday trip to Chocolate World (in a wheelchair LOL), we took it pretty easy during my visit. While in the hotel, I was able to unwrap the bandaging, and got my first look at how the wound had been closed up. This is not the most attractive picture in the world!!

Since I was planning to go back to work on Monday, I stopped taking all of my pain meds as of Saturday night, and remained med free all day on Sunday. I was able to keep my leg elevated during the ride back to Ohio, and I was feeling pretty good when I got home late Sunday night and headed to bed.

May 6th 2010 - The first bit of post-op pain

Today was the first day that I began to feel some pain. The neural block typically wears off after the first 24 hours, but I was still pretty numb for a while after that. Slowly I began to get feeling back in my toes, then in my foot, my heel, and now the back of my leg. And I was also trying to slow down on the amount of pain medication I was taking, so I began to feel some slight pain at this point. I switched from Percocet to Vicodin, and was able to keep the pain level tolerable. Sleeping became a little more difficult for me while taking the vicodin. I would fall asleep around 9 or 10, but then wake up around midnight or so. After that, I was basically up every other hour for the rest of the night. As far as my leg was concerned, though, I was doing pretty well. I have not seen the incision or the staples at this point as they are bandaged and re-wrapped in a new fiberglass splint, but I have begun to feel the "pulling" of my skin by the staples. This is not comfortable at all.