Resources for Achilles surgery recovery stories

September 4, 2020 12:22 AM

Last time I dealt with serious injury and new health conditions, forums were still a thing and there were always a few trusted ones that most people used for whatever thing they were dealing with. Now that I'm recovering from Achilles tendon repair surgery a decade and a half later, I have no idea where to go to read recovery stories, ask questions, and find resources. I'm a skilled search user but can still only find the same official medical center websites, paywalled journal articles, or the occasional blog post that's half-bitrotted. Where do all the cool recently-injured kids hang out these days? Bonus: If you've got post-Achilles surgery stories to share, I want to hear them!
posted by rhiannonstone to Health & Fitness (7 answers total)

The unfortunate answer here is probably Facebook. I study online health communities, and around 6-8 years ago most of them, across condition types, moved over to Facebook. If you haven't tried searching for a group there, you might. I would also give Reddit a try. There are a lot of subreddits for health conditions there, and the conversations there are a bit more like what you probably remember.
posted by k8lin at 2:15 AM on September 4, 2020

I had that surgery in early February, my wife joined a facebook group for me.

Honestly, other than a timeline of recovery, I didn't get much out of her comments to me about it. Lots of doomsaying about issues that never happened to me. Maybe I was lucky, who knows.

The surgery and 2 weeks of post-surgery recovery were not fun since I'm an active person. Lay in bed - only get up to pee for those two weeks if you can. Keep it elevated. Wear the boot until you are released from it by your dr and physical therapist. Go to physical therapy. My first week out of the boot, I tiled a room and mowed the lawn and everything.

I did physical therapy all through COVID and was just released. PT said I basically have to do stretches for a long time on my own (for life, not terribly unlike how often I have to wear a retainer).

I started "running" and "jumping" again in July. I still can't do up on toes. Dr says that is a year away, but he also released me. Says I can take care of it myself.

Honestly, it's something that happened that sucked, now but I'm back to normal.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:01 AM on September 4, 2020

PS: My physical therapy was generally about an hour a week, where the therapist would show me how to do exercises (and some minor other things like scar massage with various implements). So most of the PT was done at home on my own, twice daily. If you are not that motivated, be sure to tell them and come up with some other plan, because it is amazingly necessary to do the stretches to return to normal.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:07 AM on September 4, 2020

Last thing: while in the cast thing (2 weeks without moving/elevated leg), I fell twice. Both hurt, but neither did any damage. I recall my wife looking that up on the group to see how many times people fell and if people got re injured. Twice or more was pretty normal.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:12 AM on September 4, 2020

Response by poster: I was definitely afraid the answer might be Facebook or Youtube.

@The_Vegetables, your last comment is exactly the sort of thing I'd be looking for in a forum, so thank you for sharing it. My surgeon is great and I haven't started PT yet (next week!) but I definitely have so many questions like, yeah, how bad is it if I whapped my foot or accidentally put some pressure on it, how much motion should I have after a month, is it normal to feel that twinge there, tips for kitting out the knee scooter, how much do I need to worry about straining it during sex... etc.! Posting that not to ask for answers to those questions, of course, just to illustrate the sorts of things that have come up for me.

I used to get that sort of stuff from a combination of forums (for plantar fasciitis and foot fractures) and LiveJournal communities (for chronic health conditions). Those were also great places to learn about The Book or The Article everyone was considering the current state of medicine around whatever condition, which was always a great jumping-off point for more research.
posted by rhiannonstone at 10:58 AM on September 4, 2020

I would guess that Reddit might have some subs for this?
posted by gnutron at 11:40 AM on September 4, 2020

When I got the cast removed, we just asked those questions to the doctor (well, physicians' assistant because my Dr had to leave 5 minutes in to perform another surgery!) Sex was fine with boot. I had to wear the boot for 2 weeks, even for sleep, so even during sex. I asked tons of questions about healing, throbbing,nerves, etc to my physical therapist (my doctor worked with a few who he recommended that I went with) even though I could choose whomever I wanted.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:59 AM on September 8, 2020