Achilles Injury: One Week Out

It has now been one week since my injury. How's it going?

Well I am slowly regaining range of motion and strength. Today was the first day I could push down on my clutch with my forefoot instead of my heel. It is still very hard though! Stretching my Achilles is possible, but super tight and painful. I try to do it throughout the day anyway. If the Achilles is like a rubberband, I don't want it healing and ending up shorter! I'm not sure if that would realistically happen but in my mind stretching it helps. I am getting around ok, but with quite the limp. I am basically walking on my heel on my left (injured) side still. I try to ice it once or twice a day.

Outside of the actual injury, I'm kind of going nuts not being able to exercise. You'd think I might be happy to have a genuine excuse to "get out of" exercising, but I am not! Exercise is a huge, regular part of my life and I have to admit I have been snapping at family members (with a prompt apology) for stupid things...things that usually don't get to me.

So my goal today is to 1) See about swimming laps on base. I'm nervous about this because I haven't been to this lap pool and a huge majority of the patrons are Marines. This one is going to take some courage! 2) Get a PCM and the earliest possible appointment with the hope that I can get the ball rolling on a referral to physical therapy.

1/9/14: FYI while the Achilles is a tendon like I mentioned, the stretching I was doing probably wasn't helping. A torn achilles needs to be immobilized kind of with the toe pointed, and the tendon shortened. Once it is healed, physical therapy helps to gradually stretch it back out. Did I injure myself by stretching? Does it matter? I will never know! But overall, if this ever happens to you, immobilize that puppy and get to your PCM pronto! It is important to see the extent of the damage early on so intervention can be taken quickly. In my case I have developed scar tissue because my injury is so old. My surgery will probably be more extensive and will require a longer rehab period.