Just lovely. It has certainly not been my year thus far with my furnace/boiler dying on me and costing $7,000 to replace, and now this. A few weeks ago, I was at the gym getting my workout in when I stepped off of the elliptical but the foot platform moved back as I was getting off of it, causing me to turn my right ankle a bit and bend kind of awkwardly as I tried not to fall down and seriously hurt myself. My ankle hurt for a while, but it wasn't too bad.
Later that day was when my furnace/boiler decided to crap itself and die, so I got a blanket to keep me warm in my living room while watching TV. At the end of the night, I got up with the blanket in hand and started walking. As I walked, my right foot stepped on the corner of the blanket, thus tripping me. Uggggh............
My right ankle turned again and I fell sideways down to the ground. This REALLY hurt. I did a Peter Griffin "Ssssssssssssssssssssss................ Ahhhhhhhhhh................" routine for like half an hour until the pain subsided a bit.
I turned my foot back and forth to check for any broken bones and couldn't sense any. I slowly stood up and put weight on it and only felt soreness but nothing too bad. I walked around and figured everything was fine. I've twisted my ankles many times before and knew that in a few days the pain would go away and it'd be back to normal.
Well, this time the pain wasn't subsiding. I put ice on the twisted ankle but my right calf was really sore and tender (like when you lift weights and your muscles are sore the next day) and my right shin bone was very sensitive to the touch. Thankfully, I had some high strength prescription Ibuprofen tabs leftover from when I got some back spasms a few months ago. I took some of them and continued on. If I walk around on it, it's fine. If I am sitting down without leaning on my leg, I'm fine. It's just that if I'm lying down that it hurts the most.
Today I decided to finally go see a doctor because it's been quite a few weeks and the pain is still there, and with all the Ibuprofen I've been downing my stomach was starting to feel off. So I saw the doctor and they did some precautionairy x-rays on my right leg. The x-rays showed no broken bones but there was a slightly darker colored part of a bone near the bottom part of my tibia. With the other symptoms I had described to the doctor, she suspected a ligament or tendon injury. So an MRI was done and in the MRI it showed my right soleus tendon was torn.
The achilies tendon is the largest tendon in the human body in terms of thickness and length. The top part of it is comprised of a bunch of separae tendons providing strength and stability to the muscles in the calf. While it takes a LOT of force to completely rip the achilies tendon (thus causing your calf muscle to ball up behind your knee),the right fall can cause one of the supporting tendons/ligaments to tear. That is what happened to me. My calf is sore from the injury and my right leg is a bit weaker than my left is, but I can still walk normally, run normally, stand, jump, etc. The tendon I tore was really just a support one and not anything major.
So my doctor said that 4 weeks of physical therapy will help rebuild the strength in this area and may even allow the torn fibers to heal. (since the other tendons in the area are not torn, the two ripped ends are still close to each other). The therapy should also lower the constant ache and pain I feel which will also be a good thing.
If, after four weeks, the physical therapy hasn't gotten rid of the pain or increased the strength in the area, then more drastic actions will be needed. While the ripped tendon isn't a critical one for the functioning of my right leg, it is important for strength and support and if it doesn't heal up properly I will be more prone to further tendon injuries and could have a very serious achilies tendon tear if I had a really nasty fall or sports injury. So if the therapy doesn't get it healing on its own, the doctor said I would need to have it surgically repaired. So they'd cut the back of my calf open, dig around to where the two ends are, then sew them together and sew me back up.
Wow. So now I can add torn tendon to my list of various injuries I've experienced. :P Anybody here ever tear a ligament or tendon, and if so, how long did it take to heal up? While they are giving me Vicodin for the pain now, I'd rather not be taking the narcotics for months at a time.
Later that day was when my furnace/boiler decided to crap itself and die, so I got a blanket to keep me warm in my living room while watching TV. At the end of the night, I got up with the blanket in hand and started walking. As I walked, my right foot stepped on the corner of the blanket, thus tripping me. Uggggh............
My right ankle turned again and I fell sideways down to the ground. This REALLY hurt. I did a Peter Griffin "Ssssssssssssssssssssss................ Ahhhhhhhhhh................" routine for like half an hour until the pain subsided a bit.
I turned my foot back and forth to check for any broken bones and couldn't sense any. I slowly stood up and put weight on it and only felt soreness but nothing too bad. I walked around and figured everything was fine. I've twisted my ankles many times before and knew that in a few days the pain would go away and it'd be back to normal.Well, this time the pain wasn't subsiding. I put ice on the twisted ankle but my right calf was really sore and tender (like when you lift weights and your muscles are sore the next day) and my right shin bone was very sensitive to the touch. Thankfully, I had some high strength prescription Ibuprofen tabs leftover from when I got some back spasms a few months ago. I took some of them and continued on. If I walk around on it, it's fine. If I am sitting down without leaning on my leg, I'm fine. It's just that if I'm lying down that it hurts the most.
Today I decided to finally go see a doctor because it's been quite a few weeks and the pain is still there, and with all the Ibuprofen I've been downing my stomach was starting to feel off. So I saw the doctor and they did some precautionairy x-rays on my right leg. The x-rays showed no broken bones but there was a slightly darker colored part of a bone near the bottom part of my tibia. With the other symptoms I had described to the doctor, she suspected a ligament or tendon injury. So an MRI was done and in the MRI it showed my right soleus tendon was torn.
The achilies tendon is the largest tendon in the human body in terms of thickness and length. The top part of it is comprised of a bunch of separae tendons providing strength and stability to the muscles in the calf. While it takes a LOT of force to completely rip the achilies tendon (thus causing your calf muscle to ball up behind your knee),the right fall can cause one of the supporting tendons/ligaments to tear. That is what happened to me. My calf is sore from the injury and my right leg is a bit weaker than my left is, but I can still walk normally, run normally, stand, jump, etc. The tendon I tore was really just a support one and not anything major.
So my doctor said that 4 weeks of physical therapy will help rebuild the strength in this area and may even allow the torn fibers to heal. (since the other tendons in the area are not torn, the two ripped ends are still close to each other). The therapy should also lower the constant ache and pain I feel which will also be a good thing.
If, after four weeks, the physical therapy hasn't gotten rid of the pain or increased the strength in the area, then more drastic actions will be needed. While the ripped tendon isn't a critical one for the functioning of my right leg, it is important for strength and support and if it doesn't heal up properly I will be more prone to further tendon injuries and could have a very serious achilies tendon tear if I had a really nasty fall or sports injury. So if the therapy doesn't get it healing on its own, the doctor said I would need to have it surgically repaired. So they'd cut the back of my calf open, dig around to where the two ends are, then sew them together and sew me back up.
Wow. So now I can add torn tendon to my list of various injuries I've experienced. :P Anybody here ever tear a ligament or tendon, and if so, how long did it take to heal up? While they are giving me Vicodin for the pain now, I'd rather not be taking the narcotics for months at a time.
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