So, ten months out from Haglund’s surgery, I guess it’s a good time for another update.
Got a little worried on vacation in July; we were at the beach and I was barefoot and in flip flops and super flat Sperrys every day. I was noticing some swelling and tightness in the retro calcaneal area every day. Turns out I just shouldn’t wear shoes without a tiny bit of heel padding or elevation on an everyday basis. Or, more specifically, walk a couple miles going back and forth to the beach in shoes that flat. Couldn’t really do it pre op either, so no biggie. Once I started wearing my regular New Balance trainers and work boots again every day it was back to normal.
Definition of normal these days:
Being able to get out of bed and put both feet flat on the floor without pain.
Being able to speed walk again (as much as I can with these Polish tree trunk legs of mine). No pain, no limping.
Easily going up onto my toes on my op foot. Balance on both feet now almost equal. I don’t know when the single calf raise became easier. I was doing them with much effort and some pain before I finished PT. Gradually as my calf became stronger it just happened. End of PT definitely does not mean end of recovery time.
Able to do kettlebell swings and squats without pain/stiffness. Doing short kettlebell Tabatas every day has led to a quick overall increase in strength and flexibility.
Walking is no longer painful. The closest thing to pain these days is stiffness. A quick stretch fixes that. Back to enjoying walks and hikes with the dog.
Steps: finally got the spring back in my push off and can run up the steps like I used to. Minus the feeling of my Achilles feeling like a guitar string being plucked by a sharp claw.
Walking uphill: I can walk uphill easily now! Without pain! Without skewing my foot laterally to take the strain off my Achilles. Without hurting for days and weeks after. It has made golf so much more fun, since I’m always hitting my ball down over some damn hillside.
Ten months out, I think I can say definitively that I am back to 100%. Before I had this surgery, I was understandably concerned at how long I’d be off work, or what my abilities would be when I did go back. I pinned my surgeon down with that question and he gave me best case scenario of 3 months off and worst case of 6 months off. Scary stuff, the prospect of being off work 6 months. It really is true that if he had told me full recovery would take 10 months, it might have scared me off of surgery. However, the progress is so incremental. All of a sudden I notice that I’m doing something without pain. Things that used to lay me up for weeks are now effortless. There was a time during recovery that every time I got up from sitting or got out of the car, I was limping for the first many steps. That has improved so gradually that I cannot even say when it got better.
Looking back now at the grind and small frustrations of this long recovery, I can now see that that time was just a blip in the grand scheme, and so worth it, in the long run. To be able to get moving from the time I get out of bed to the time I fall back into my bed, exhausted – without constant pain, without having to worry about at what point in the day I would be in too much pain to enjoy our active lifestyle, without the constant pain, swelling and limping that accompanied every day, without the restrictions it began to impose on every aspect of my life – I am so thankful I had the means to pursue this surgery and recovery.
I was reminded by a recent comment to this blog that there are people out there, like me, who wanted to know what the day-to-day experience was/is. I remember searching tirelessly, myself, for personal accounts – so I felt I owed a big-picture update. The big picture is good!
Haglunds Recovery 