in repair

It's now been three and a half months since I had surgery to repair a ruptured achilles tendon in my right leg. At the three month mark I saw my orthopedic surgeon, whom I've seen more than most of my friends the last 12-15 weeks, and he gave me, and my physical therapists, the go ahead to start strengthening my ankle. He said that within four weeks of physical therapy appointments, I should be able to start running again.

I had the first of these appointments today, and it's hard to imagine I'm going to be hitting the road running again in just four weeks. I stopped using my CAM walker about three weeks ago, but I still have a noticeable limp, limited flexibility and lack the ability to effectively push off of my right foot. I also have quite a bit of scar tissue buildup in the back of my leg. To eradicate this I'm supposed to regularly massage my own leg deeply with lotion. If I decide to totally gross everyone out in the near future I'll be sure to video tape myself doing this and post it online - that's gotta be worth at least a couple hundred thousand hits on youtube, right?

But in all seriousness, I'm starting out slow with some basic exercises to help me get accustomed to exerting force with my foot again. I'll also begin to use elliptical machines and exercise bikes as I progress towards running, which will start as brisk walking on a treadmill - exciting stuff, I know.

It's still very much a blur to me how all this has happened this summer. I vaguely remember days of being a shut-in due to having a large, heavy cast on my leg and living on the fourth floor of an apartment without an elevator - I also vaguely remember scooting up four flights of stairs on my ass the night after my surgery. I've had the fortune of being distracted by job searching during my recover - I've also had the misfortune of having to job search in the cradle of nepotism, or New England as some might call it, but employment is a topic for a different post.

Making a full recovery is of the utmost importance to me. I very much enjoyed the active lifestyle I led in Boston before tearing my tendon and look forward to resuming it in the not-so-distant future. I'll be sure to keep you updated along the way.