http://myachillesrupture.com -
May 2nd, 2009 was the date in which my life would be changed. Allow me to take you back to the scene of the incident; basketball was the activity of choice during that evening. I was running up and down in full court action for about 90min. No complaints, no hints of soreness, nothing to prepare me for what was about to happen.....I was driving through the lane to the hoop from the top left of the key. After about 4-5 aggressive steps to the basket.....BOOM! Imagine the sound of snapping your fingers and multiply that sound by 10. The guy covering me even looked at me and said, "Oh, that's not good!" I knew something was not right because I lost all of the tension in the back of my left leg, from the area under the back of my knee down to my heel bone. I never took another step on that left leg for fear of making a bad situation worse. This was NOT a tweaked ankle or cramp in my calf muscle! I know enough about human anatomy and sports injuries to determine it was a ruptured Achilles Tendon. I hopped over to the bench and clutched by left calf muscle and it was like jello; this was bad. Guys were telling me to "walk it off" and get back out there to help my team. Instead, I hopped off the bench, out of the gym and into my car. I was going to drive home.
My mind was racing as I attempted to gather myself prior to driving home; fortunately, I was not driving a manual transmission because I would not have been able to drive myself home. My thoughts turned to my family....My wife and I had a new baby and a three year old child. I was very active with my children and I knew this injury meant immobilization would be incredibly important if I expected to make a reasonable recovery. Not good. I immediately went from concerned to very sad and disgusted with myself for what happened. I thought about work. A fortunate reality I had was that my employment situation was not dependent upon physical labor. As long as I had an Internet connection and a phone, I could still be productive. Whew!! Back to the family. How would my wife deal with this? She was laser focused on our new baby and we had an active 3yo who always wants to play as 3yo are entitled to do. ;) I stared at my phone prior to starting my car to decide how I would tell my wife what happened to me; that time felt like an eternity. I chickened out and couldn't do it.....I dialed her up and said, "I'm on my way. I hurt my ankle, could you get the ice pack ready for me?" She said, Ok, and I started up the car and started driving....
The drive home was filled with more thoughts and "what ifs" and "whys". I've always been a person who took fitness seriously. I warmed up. I stretched. Sure, I was in my early 30's and certainly not in the best shape of my life, but I was above Weekend Warrior status and could hang in a 2-3 hour full court session of ball. I consciously consume healthy food and at least a gallon of water per day. These types of things happen to other people, not someone who puts forth the effort for preventative maintenance like I do, right? Wrong. So.......I get home. Fortunately, our garage is connected to our house. I was able to pry myself from the driver's seat and hop out of the vehicle and up the two steps from the garage floor to our kitchen floor. One small issue though....our 3yo was sleeping and my wife was putting the new baby to sleep. I needed some help getting to a chair or the couch. Sure, I could hop over there, but I also needed to get my foot elevated and the ice pack on it....soon! Oddly, the Achilles area was not painful, but did feel somewhat disconnected....because it literally was! Well, I decided that I did not want to wake up the kids, therefore, I decided to sit on the ground and slide myself (backwards, of course due to better leverage....) to the couch to then elevate my foot. At this point, I hadn't taken off my sock yet to look at the ankle area. My wife comes into the room and says, "What happened to you?" I said, "My Achilles Tendon is ruptured; feel my calf." I have a very calm wife and I'm glad she stayed that way. I took my sock off and the swelling and bruising had already begun. Uh oh....It was a Saturday night. "Of course, I can wait until Monday to see the doctor," is what I said to my wife. She wasn't having it....She said, "You're going to the ER...NOW!" I said, "I'm not bleeding. I have no broken bones." I know this is my Achilles. How about Urgent Care?" She told me they would tell me to go to the ER. Being the skeptic that I am, she called 2 Urgent Care clinics in our area and both said I needed to visit the ER and I did.
My wife offered to drive me to the ER, but again, our kids were sleeping and being they were so young, we decided that I could drive to the ER myself and my wife would remain at home. No problem. So, I drove to the ER. It's about 20min away from our house and yet another fortunate event took place...I was able to be seen within 20min of arriving at the ER. Are you kidding me?! No, it actually happened that way. We've all heard (or have even lived...) the horror stories of 4-6hr waits in the ER and how they won't see you unless you walk in with your arm in your lap. Thank God I had no significant waiting while there to see the doctor. At this point I was much more calm as I began to mentally accept what had happened to me. I was in a wheelchair and after registering, I was wheeled back into an examination room. The doctor came out within 5min of me sitting on the hospital bed. I was asked a series of questions about my overall health, past injuries and what I was doing that caused this. Then, I was asked to lay down on my stomach and hang my feet off the edge of the bed. It was time for the
Thompson Test and I passed; my suspicions were confirmed, I was officially diagnosed with a complete rupture of my left Achilles Tendon. I was told surgery would be the an option to consider and I was put into a partial cast/heavy layers of wrap and given crutches (my best friends for the next 8wks) and sent on my way. I was able to carefully position myself into my vehicle and I drove home.
I called my wife on the way home to tell her the diagnosis and that I would be seeing the surgeon on Monday and likely have surgery sometime during the week. Scary. I had never been cut open before. I don't have a fear of needles, blood or hospitals, but I was just very fortunate that I was able to make it into my 30's with no surgical procedures with being as active in sporting activities as I had been for my entire life. Fast forward to Monday and my appointment with the surgeon. My wife was able to come with me and we just took this new experience as best we could; I was glad she was there. Having a strong support system in tact when you go through an injury, surgery and recovery like this is probably the most important detail to have in place if you can influence that. Sidebar comment: Injury or other traumatic experiences tend to present themselves without warning; be sure you don't take the quality of your relationships for granted. Had my wife, mother, grandmother, in-laws and even a very select group of friends not been so selfless with me, I would have been an absolute wreck. The mental component of this injury is VERY significant. Back to the surgeon visit.....So, I had about a dozen questions for this doctor, but he setup the consultation as a very systematic approach and I had most of my questions answered before I even asked them. This guy was great. He made me feel very comfortable and that was yet ANOTHER relief as I was going through the early stages of this injury. If you cannot tell at this point, much of what happened to me was outside of my control and I although I could control my reaction to these situations, it certainly made things a bit more convenient as they happened to be laid out. In other words, your mindset is crucial from the beginning and throughout the duration of the recovery process. Some things you can control and others you cannot. I do subscribe to the fact that you can control YOUR reaction to certain situations though.....
I still found it to be odd that I wasn't having pain in my Achilles region. Of course, I was sure to keep the elevation level of my ankle above the level of my heart, but you can be sure that a few times when my leg was down that the swelling and pooling of blood in the affected area was quite painful. The surgeon mentioned that was normal and not to be worried. He said the surgery might ramp up the pain sensitivity for the first few days post-op. I had surgery two days later and the next chapter of my life would begin.....
The surgery happened
without a hitch. I was given a few different meds for pain, to prevent infection (near the incision area) and was told to take a baby aspirin to keep my blood a bit thin to reduce the chances of a blood clot. I ended up taking the pain meds for about 3days after surgery. The pain was not unbearable and I am not a person who looks to cure ailments with medicine; I'd much rather be preventative and/or even homeopathic to some degree than immediately reaching for the western medicine solution of medication. I will admit that taking some of the pain meds took the edge off just a bit. I was in the
heavy cotton and cloth wrapping for one week and then I had a follow-up appointment with the surgeon's office for installation of the cast. The surgeon wanted to be sure that I was healing properly and that my
incision area and stitches looked ok prior to
removing them. Being the true Detroit Lions fan that I am, I went with
Honolulu Blue as my cast color. ;) The cast went on with no issues and the elevation of the ankle area above the level of my heart continued..........for 6 weeks!
Sidebar comment: You may have noticed that I intentionally mention "above the level of my heart" and this is very deliberate because it is THAT important! To truly reduce the pooling of blood to your extremities, you want to ensure you are not giving gravity a hand by keeping the injured area below the level of your heart. Blood clots are serious and impacting your blood circulation in a negative will slow down your healing and no one needs that. Fast forward to
cast removal day. Of course there were many things that took place within the previous six weeks, but I'll spare you....I will say that the mental component of this injury was very prominent during that six weeks and having the positive reinforcement of my family and friends support structure was really important for me. So, the surgeon checked me out and made me lie on my stomach and pressed by left foot away from his body and told me to push back. THAT WAS SCARY!!! I thought I was going to re-rupture my Achilles and he knew that would be my reaction. Under my breath, I told that guy every name in the book. LOL! He was happy with my healing and wrote me a prescription for 2.5 mos of physical therapy. I was excited! I was really looking forward to physical therapy since it was progress and I really enjoy working out anyway, so I saw this as just formal exercise with a "trainer" and part of the journey I was on. Of course, I was also given a prescription for the
ROBOCOP boot; again, progress! ;) I was still using my crutches at this point and for the next 3-4 weeks into therapy. After being immobile in a cast for 6 weeks, you can imagine that
swelling was still something I had to manage as I was early into PT. I had a great experience in PT. I realize that not everyone's health care situation affords them that luxury and I definitely did not take any day for granted. Other than my family/friends support, the next important influence on my healing and recovery was my therapist. The guy was incredible! If you happen to be in the South Eastern MI area, I'd pass his name along to you in a heartbeat! Ironically, he graduated from the same
University as I did for undergrad with his PT degree; instant street cred! ;) I learned a ton about patience and perseverance while going through PT. I had to have an extra month of PT because the surgeon was not completely comfortable with my walking 2.5mos in, therefore, he graciously wrought me a new script to extend it one month. That was ok with me because I knew it was helping and I could sense the progress and that is always a good morale booster in situations like this. My
last day of PT was tough because I wanted to really continue the focused rehab and the extra motivating forces of my primary PT as well as the other PTs in the clinic. I was very much grateful for the care and the experience and I still carry the lessons I learned there 2yrs out from the injury. If you're fortunate enough to have a memorable PT experience, then I think you will really identify with what I'm saying here.
Fast forward 5mos and you get to the point in which I decided it was time to share my experience through
this site. My
reasoning for wanting to create a website was that since I had PLENTY of new found free time as I was healing prior to entering PT, I could not find any resource that I felt I could identify with. Sure, there are technical accounts of Achilles Tendon rupture injuries, but I was not in the mood to read a case study or a medical journal. I wanted someone to share their honest opinion, both good and bad when it came to this injury. I'm certainly not here to say that my experience is the only way someone can go through this injury, but if I can (and I have...) connect with at least one person who takes the time to read this, watch a
video, follow me on
Twitter or connect on
Vimeo,
Posterous or even
Facebook, then the effort to keep this site alive is WELL WORTH it. I can honestly say that for every person I connect with and speak to on a weekly basis, it still makes me smile that the Internet has allowed this form of community building and interpersonal support structure. I appreciate each one of you, seriously. Thank you.
I could share so much more that has happened to me in the last two years, but that's another conversation for another time. As always, if you have any questions about this injury, my experience, a useful mindset to possess as you go through this or anything else you are curious about, talk to me or at least talk to someone.....it's important to continue feeling connected to humanity....Trust me. ;)
