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So sorry to hear about your issue! Hope you can get your testing done soon so doctors can decide a good course of action to fix the problem.
Two things stand out, the sitting so long every day and needing to lose weight. That's so unhealthy despite all the vitamins you take. I'm assuming you'll need to go to physical therapy again, please find out from your PT what exercises and how much walking you can do. And if the doctor recommends surgery to fix it, I would say yes yes yes.
And even before this is fixed, try to get enough sunshine, water and sleep.
Oh no, I sure don't want any surgery & esp in these days of COVID!
For heaven's sake, you will take a lifelong injury instead of the teeny tiny risk of getting covid?
I busted both of my arms in a freak fall 2 years ago and had a 4 day hospital stay and 7 hour surgery, right in the heat of Covid before vaccines. My girls have been in the hospital giving birth to 4 of my grandchildren during covid. My mom was in the hospital and then a month in a nursing home during covid. My BIL had heart surgery during covid.
LIFE GOES ON. Don't avoid medical care for important things! BTW, none of us got covid during any of our hospital stays or doctor visits and only my BIL was vaccinated fully.
So sorry to hear about your issue! Hope you can get your testing done soon so doctors can decide a good course of action to fix the problem.
Two things stand out, the sitting so long every day and needing to lose weight. That's so unhealthy despite all the vitamins you take. I'm assuming you'll need to go to physical therapy again, please find out from your PT what exercises and how much walking you can do. And if the doctor recommends surgery to fix it, I would say yes yes yes.
And even before this is fixed, try to get enough sunshine, water and sleep.
KaraG, thanks a lot! I know, I know. For something this serious, I'd do the surgery fi I have to, I can't just hobble around for the rest of my life. My mom had to go to the ER & stay 2 nights at the hospital during COVID too & like myself, & fiance', we're not vaccinated. NONE of us ever had COVID either though all this time. & since you brought up family members having babies, I'm a little too old to have kids at this point, but if I was younger, I'd really think about having kids in this day & age...not just due to COVID, but due to how the world is in general. I would have liked to have had twins...back in my mid-20s or so, but guess it wasn't in the cards.
I'm already starting to lose weight & not just that, but eat healthier too.
Cuzzant, more questions to you please if you don't mind:
Read your other 2 threads, thanks! So it's been 13 mos since your surgery, glad you're able to function well for the most part.
- Do you have any tips on how to elevate one's leg when sitting at a desk? I assume to just have a cushioned table underneath the desk to have the foot at the right height.
I’m no Dr, but I think the leg should be above heart level to help with swelling.
- Is the leg on the side of your injury a tad larger than your other leg due to maybe the stress that the ankle injury caused? Or perhaps from a sligh build-up of fluids, inflammation, etc.? I've noticed that most of the yrs since my injury, but it never cause issue, so I nev talked to a dr about it.
No. Never had inflammation in the leg. I did have swelling in the ankle for several months after surgery. My left calf was slightly smaller than my right. Dr attributed it to a bit of atrophy since I was not able to use it for several months.
- Do you still ice & elevate it these days too?
I haven’t had to ice since early this year.
- Does your ankle ever get swollen every once in a blue moon?
I haven’t noticed my ankle swelling in many months. Numbness, yes.
I did back in 2008. I went in for the 1-day surgery, but the orthopedic surgeon couldn't fix it. He said one end (of the tendon) went far up in my leg (calf) so he couldn't attach both ends back together. He said it will mend back on it's own. I had physical therapy that 1 summer & that's all.
Every once in a blue moon, my ankle will get swollen for no reason (meaning no excessive walking was done, etc.) & it goes away after a couple or so days. My L leg, which was the side where the injury was does look a slight tad bigger than my R leg, so I assume it's due to the injury.
Fast forward to now. Starting a few days ago, my ankle got swollen again, but something's more swollen than usual & it's lasting longer than it normally does, so I'm minorly hobbling along here. I'm never in pain though when it's swollen. I told my dr about it (saw her the other day re: another matter) & she wants to do an ultrasound on my leg, so that will be done soon.
I hope this swelling goes down & I can walk normally again! I work sitting at a desk all day for 10-14 hrs/day & don't have the chance to elevate it much w/ ice, which I never did in the past when it was swollen. But I sit w/ my feet up on an ottoman in general...have for yrs.
Any advice, suggestions, etc. in the meantime please? TIA!
Once the tendon has moved up the sheath it won’t come back down w/o help
My husband torn his Achille’s tendon when he was in his late 20s==he is 73 now
He went to emergency hospital in Austin, TX
We were visiting family and he tore it playing tennis
The ER doctor just put an ace banadage on it
Said go to an ortho in Houston when we got back home—
Bad decision probably and bad ER but we had little exposure to emergencies at that point in our lives
Back home went to Ortho our doctor recommended
He was an idiot
Kept going in and out of the room and losing files
He had my husband lie on exam table on his stomach and asked him to move/flex his foot
He had to take some time to do it but he could—
If you have completely torn your Achilles’s then you can’t flex your foot
The doctor couldn’t understand how my husband could do that—he was almost disappointed
He put a solid cast on foot/leg up to knee and had my husband point his foot/toe down while he was putting the cast on…
Said he should wear the cast for 6-8 wks then when we took it off, he would see if it healed well enough not to need surgery—
When we got home we called someone my husband worked with whose wife was nurse in the MD Anderson center—an ortho nurse—
She got my husband appt with sports/ortho surgeon who worked on pro athletes
When HE came into the room, he told my husband that he wouldn’t operate unless it was absolutely the last thing to do because the side effects from surgery was pretty bad and often required other surgeries so he only did it for professional athletes when he had to SEE the tendon sewed together
He had my husband move his foot/toes—which he could—so the dr said that ment the tendon was not completely ruptured—that as long as it was attached and was in position to help the rest of the tendon knit, he would just leave it along for about 8 wks and then remove the cast
So he did not replace the cast the first guy put on even though he wished it was little better done
So my husband was able to drive himself to work because it was his left leg—
Used crutches
And after the time his leg was really smelling rank from the dead skin that could not slough off
When they took the cast off there was ton of dead skin that came with it
His leg was weak—but he could flex it, stand on it, walk w/o dragging foot
He was supposed to go for rehab and work at strengthening the muscle but he really didn’t
He had played golf mainly before and he was able to return to that w/o much loss of power
But his left calf is still smaller than his right
Several years later he was taking a wood carving class and there were not enough protective gloves
He stuck an awl in his thumb and cut that tendon—
Had to have surgery because he didn’t go to ER right away—didn’t realize how serious the injury was because there was not much bleeding w/puncture wound
He had to have two surgeries on the thumb and really have lot of rehab
Was his left hand so didn’t impact use since he was right handed—but he has lot of scaring/adhesions with the tendon and the sheath from surgery —
So we could understand how surgery for Achilles’s tendon would be as much problem as cure from the thumb—
You just need a good orthopedic if you have a serious injury to your tendons…
Cuzzant & Roselvr, thanks a lot for your input. Yes, I agree that something more needs to be done pretty fast here re: finding out what's going on. In the meantime, I may need to get some kind of ankle brace or wrap to keep it stabilized.
Oh no, I sure don't want any surgery & esp in these days of COVID! But sure don't want to be limping around for the rest of my life since I'm only 47 because not only do I not want to limp, but not having full use of one ankle/foot will put additional strain on my good ankle/leg & cause trouble for it later too. (Had my injury a few wks shy of turning 34 in Dec 2008) & I've never jogged, ran, played tennis anymore since then. I did start e-biking in spring 2021. Sure, being able to run would be nice, but not important to me...unless I had to get away fast from something.
Fortunately, other than walking, I'm not that terribly active anymore. And I should be able to still go biking, but won't now until I get to the bottom of my ankle. I'll lose weight to lessen the weight & pressure on everything.
Cuzzant, more questions to you please if you don't mind:
Read your other 2 threads, thanks! So it's been 13 mos since your surgery, glad you're able to function well for the most part.
- Do you have any tips on how to elevate one's leg when sitting at a desk? I assume to just have a cushioned table underneath the desk to have the foot at the right height.
- Is the leg on the side of your injury a tad larger than your other leg due to maybe the stress that the ankle injury caused? Or perhaps from a sligh build-up of fluids, inflammation, etc.? I've noticed that most of the yrs since my injury, but it never cause issue, so I nev talked to a dr about it.
- Do you still ice & elevate it these days too?
- Does your ankle ever get swollen every once in a blue moon?
Maybe it's time to consider crutches or a cane? The more you walk on it, the more you're injuring it. It's not going to get better while you live life.
You also need to find a way to elevate it during work. Can you sit sideways at your desk with a stool or chair for your leg? You don't need a wireless keyboard, just turn it side ways. It's how I use the computer, my feet are up. I'm icing my back with a gel ice pack that I made by opening one from Walmart, splitting the gel in half, then filling a quart heat seal bag with it. I then seal it on the "wet food" setting which pulls all the air out. I'll then hit the seal button really fast when I see the gel creeping up. I like the gel much better than anything else, I especially prefer it in the heat seal bags because they're easily bent to the shape I need for injuries. You can also use Dawn dish detergent, I like the gel better. Since you wouldn't be sitting on one like me, you could do the same with a quart zip lock bag.
My daughter who's almost 30 has a lot of foot and leg issues, really out of the blue. The Christmas before COVID she was working UPS as a helper, walking fast and running to deliver packages when she felt something snap in her leg. She fractured a bone or two by running.
Similar for her foot. A year before UPS she had fractured a bone in her foot by falling. The hospital never saw the fracture, her bone ended up dying, it had to be removed. She's now fractured a few bones in her feet in the last few years. We don't know if she has brittle bone disease or if there is a side effect of one of her meds. All I know is after her bone died, I learned that you really need to see a foot specialist when hurting your foot. I will be seeing one too after breaking my big toe a few months ago. There's nothing they can do for it, it doesn't feel like it healed right in the joint.
Since you're dependent on your GP for referrals, you should make an appointment to tell them you need referrals for a foot doctor/surgeon and a orthopedic doctor/surgeon who works on lower legs. I'm not sure if any work on feet too.
My daughter used to have a wrist injury that started with a fall. Every few months it would refracture. Process of elimination, she was waking up swollen, she kept hitting it on her headboard. We started at an orthopedic, by the second time I took her to a hand and wrist doctor who was so much better than the orthopedic.
You should see if you can find a local Facebook group for your area to make a post asking people if they have a leg ortho and a foot doctor that they like. You can also try the NextDoor site. I don't know how busy your state/area CD section is, if it's busy you can consider posting here too. That's what I usually do if I'm not sure of who my GP would send me to. Usually my GP's are pretty good, they would send me where they would send their family. I've also been told to see so and so in Philadelphia which is 40 to an hour away.
I don't want to scare you but my older sibling almost lost her lower left leg back in 2005. All they knew was that there was an infection in the bone. Her surgeon decided to try one more thing which some how ended up tracing the infection to a tooth that wasn't even bothering her. She originally injured it by hiking, IIRC she twisted it when she stepped down. It really was a freak thing, the infection was out of the blue from stepping wrong. I don't recall if she also slightly fractured something, I also don't recall exactly which bone was infected. Had her doctor not figured out the tooth infection, she would have lost her leg from below the knee. After that happened to her, I wouldn't mess around with foot or leg pain. You need to see someone competent before nothing can be done, you end up losing it. Extreme, yes, but freak things happen. You don't want an amputation. That comes with years of fathom pain because the nerve have been cut, they misfire. There's a thread from a few months ago where one CD member is dealing with it years after losing the limb.
I see you're in Southern Cali, Dr Ebonie Vincent from the show "My Feet Are Killing Me" is also there. Here is her website for the show. I then googled to see if there was a business website, I found this page, Orange County podiatry and this page for doctor Ebonie, it says she is in Orange California with an office in Long Beach too. She is an excellent foot surgeon. You should be able to see the show on demand or on TLC's main show page web site, some of the foot issues she's fixed were amazing. She's very cool under pressure in the OR too, or at least when cameras are filming lol. It's in it's 4th year.
Dr. Ebonie is currently taking new patients.
Dr. Ebonie Vincent, DPM
Foot & Ankle Surgeon
1310 W Stewart Drive Suite 401, Orange, CA 92868
Call or Text—(949) 203-5704
I'm really worried about my ankle. I did nothing to it (not even excessive walking, etc.), it just got swollen once again like it does once in a blue moon, but something's worse this time. I can't get comfortable when I'm sitting on the sofa trying to elevate my foot & I need to figure out a way to elevate my foot while I'm at my computer working for 8-12 hrs pretty much all 7 days/wk because sitting here w/ my foot down low all those hrs isn't good for swelling. & then I'm usually at my desk for another 2-3 hrs longer ea day, but I'm going to cut way back on that from now on.
And it was Dec 2007 (not 2008) when I had my achilles tendon rupture, so it will be 15 yrs ago this Dec & I nev had trouble all this time until now, (except for a little swelling once in a blue moon that quickly went away). I seemed to be able to keep my left foot elevated for longer while I slept & yesterday, took these Circulation & Vein Support for Healthy Legs vitamins that I've known about & tk here & there, but not too regularly. This morning, the swelling was gone, but I'll see how it gets throughout the day. I'm still hobbling around. I'm afraid I'll have to get an orthopedic dr referral.
Quote:
Originally Posted by loves2read
Once the tendon has moved up the sheath it won’t come back down w/o help
My husband torn his Achille’s tendon when he was in his late 20s==he is 73 now
He went to emergency hospital in Austin, TX
We were visiting family and he tore it playing tennis
The ER doctor just put an ace banadage on it
Said go to an ortho in Houston when we got back home—
Bad decision probably and bad ER but we had little exposure to emergencies at that point in our lives
Back home went to Ortho our doctor recommended
He was an idiot
Kept going in and out of the room and losing files
He had my husband lie on exam table on his stomach and asked him to move/flex his foot
He had to take some time to do it but he could—
If you have completely torn your Achilles’s then you can’t flex your foot
The doctor couldn’t understand how my husband could do that—he was almost disappointed
He put a solid cast on foot/leg up to knee and had my husband point his foot/toe down while he was putting the cast on…
Said he should wear the cast for 6-8 wks then when we took it off, he would see if it healed well enough not to need surgery—
When we got home we called someone my husband worked with whose wife was nurse in the MD Anderson center—an ortho nurse—
She got my husband appt with sports/ortho surgeon who worked on pro athletes When HE came into the room, he told my husband that he wouldn’t operate unless it was absolutely the last thing to do because the side effects from surgery was pretty bad and often required other surgeries so he only did it for professional athletes when he had to SEE the tendon sewed together
He had my husband move his foot/toes—which he could—so the dr said that ment the tendon was not completely ruptured—that as long as it was attached and was in position to help the rest of the tendon knit, he would just leave it along for about 8 wks and then remove the cast
So he did not replace the cast the first guy put on even though he wished it was little better done
...
So we could understand how surgery for Achilles’s tendon would be as much problem as cure from the thumb—
You just need a good orthopedic if you have a serious injury to your tendons…
Thanks a lot for taking the time to type out all your info! The part I bolded above is the part I wish every orthopedic dr/surgeon knew! I know I have to do something here & pretty quickly!
Sorry about your husband's ordeal. My fiance' had pretty much a similar thing happen to his thumb too! Back in high school, he was in his woodshop class. The teacher failed to red-flag that a certain saw didn't work & my fiance' sliced his thumb in 1/2, had surgery of course, so eerily a very similar accident.
Maybe it's time to consider crutches or a cane? The more you walk on it, the more you're injuring it. It's not going to get better while you live life.
You also need to find a way to elevate it during work. Can you sit sideways at your desk with a stool or chair for your leg? You don't need a wireless keyboard, just turn it side ways. It's how I use the computer, my feet are up. I'm icing my back with a gel ice pack that I made by opening one from Walmart, splitting the gel in half, then filling a quart heat seal bag with it. I then seal it on the "wet food" setting which pulls all the air out. I'll then hit the seal button really fast when I see the gel creeping up. I like the gel much better than anything else, I especially prefer it in the heat seal bags because they're easily bent to the shape I need for injuries. You can also use Dawn dish detergent, I like the gel better. Since you wouldn't be sitting on one like me, you could do the same with a quart zip lock bag.
...
Since you're dependent on your GP for referrals, you should make an appointment to tell them you need referrals for a foot doctor/surgeon and a orthopedic doctor/surgeon who works on lower legs. I'm not sure if any work on feet too.
...
You should see if you can find a local Facebook group for your area to make a post asking people if they have a leg ortho and a foot doctor that they like. You can also try the NextDoor site. I don't know how busy your state/area CD section is, if it's busy you can consider posting here too. That's what I usually do if I'm not sure of who my GP would send me to. Usually my GP's are pretty good, they would send me where they would send their family. I've also been told to see so and so in Philadelphia which is 40 to an hour away.
...
I see you're in Southern Cali, Dr Ebonie Vincent from the show "My Feet Are Killing Me" is also there. Here is her website for the show. I then googled to see if there was a business website, I found this page, Orange County podiatry and this page for doctor Ebonie, it says she is in Orange California with an office in Long Beach too. She is an excellent foot surgeon. You should be able to see the show on demand or on TLC's main show page web site, some of the foot issues she's fixed were amazing. She's very cool under pressure in the OR too, or at least when cameras are filming lol. It's in it's 4th year.
Dr. Ebonie is currently taking new patients.
Dr. Ebonie Vincent, DPM
Foot & Ankle Surgeon
1310 W Stewart Drive Suite 401, Orange, CA 92868
Call or Text—(949) 203-5704
Thanks a lot for taking the time to type out all your info! Wish I could rep you again, but system won't allow it anymore. I know I have to do something here & pretty quickly! I had to reply to these last two posts separately since they were quite lengthy. Yes, I have to elevate my leg a LOT more during the day, stay off of it more in general, & get some kind of boot or something to keep it stabilized in the meantime while I see what dr referrals I can get, etc. I'll see what way(s) I can sit at my desk & I've always had a wirelss keyboard & mose, by the way.
Sorry about your daughter's ordeal w/ her foot & wrist. Woah, bone fracture(s) by just running! And great thing your sibling's limb was saved!
Yes, I've seen, "My Feet Are Killing Me" several times w/ Dr. Ebonie Vincent. I sure would lover for her to be my doctor, so I'll call & see if she takes my insurance. The drive to her is as little as 35-40 min IF the traffic's good, which is hardly ever anymore. I'd be willing to see her for sure, (but have no desire to be on the show, ha)!
But I know about NextDoor too so if I have to ask for orthopedic suggestions, I will, thanks for the reminder & about FB too.
I'm wondering if all your flare ups right now could be from some systemic issue, the swelling, high white blood counts, long term cough, etc.
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