Achilles
Decompression Operation and Recovery
I did promise in the last issue that I would give you an article
about my operation and recovery, so here it is. First of all I had to be at the
I arrived on time and was given my lovely little gown to
change into. I chucked it on and really started to look the part, - really
sophisticated you could say. Fortunately it tied at the back and side, so no
white bits were on show. Now it was time to sit and wait to be called to
theatre, giving plenty of chance to consider how hungry I was. I hadn’t been
allowed to eat since the previous night and my tummy had now started to realise
it wasn’t getting its usual breakfast.
Fortunately my wife Angela
and my Mum had come with me and said
they would stay until I was taken down to theatre, so I at least had company to
help me forget about the ever growing hunger pangs. I would still quite of
liked a nice bowl of muesli though!
My room had two beds in it; well I couldn’t expect to be on my own
as I was only an NHS patient who had
been referred to a private hospital. It was ensuite though, so I did feel
pretty posh. It sure was better than being on a busy ward at
My room mate arrived shortly after me with his wife and started
moaning before he even got through the door - just what I wanted! He had a go
at the nurse as soon as she asked to put his gown on and made her fetch him one
in a different style. He thought the first gown would be too tight round his
neck and it would upset him as he was claustrophobic. Brilliant, I was stuck in
a small room with an angry man who didn’t like confined spaces; I knew then
that I was in for a long day.
He then continued to moan non stop about what time he would
be seen, saying he wasn’t waiting all day. He even sent his wife to find out
when the surgeon planned to give him his injections. He moaned even more when
she said the surgeon hadn’t got a list of times as such and that he would be
fitted in between the more major surgery as he was only having his knees
injected.
After a while it was pretty obvious I wasn’t going to theatre any
time soon, so I sent Angela and Mum home as Angela needed to get herself ready for work. That left me with
‘happy chops’ and his wife, so I immediately buried my face in my book. The
moaning guy of course got seen long before me - such is the injustice in this
world! He was done and gone and I had a new room mate before they came to take
me to be slashed open. Fortunately the new chap was old and quiet and happy to
watch the television in peace.
After six long, and very boring, hours they finally came for me and
so I wandered off through the corridors to finally have my long awaited for Achilles tendon decompression surgery.
When I got to theatre I hopped up onto the bed and had my
anesthetic line popped into the back of my hand. Well I did after they finally
got me to pump my hand for long enough to find a usable vein. Once the needle
was in they started to pump the drugs into me. The only problem was, one of the
two lines they were using wouldn’t pump so, after a quick swap about and me 
feeling a bit stoned, it started to work. Within about five
seconds I was out cold and the next thing I remember was waking up in the exact
same spot I had nodded off in.
I was pretty much pain free, so that made me feel relieved. I knew
already that I would be able to make it up the four flights of stairs to get in
my flat once I had escaped the hospital. I had to learn how to use the crutches
before that though. You have to perfect your technique for this kind of thing;
I wouldn’t want to look silly struggling up the stairs like Bambi if I bumped into any of my
neighbours!
The operation only took about ten minutes, which is amazing when
you consider it will take months to recover from. It consisted of my skin being
sliced open along the tendon, the sheath it is encased in is the totally
removed, as it is quite thick with excessive scar tissue. Now the tendon is
visible the surgeon removed the lumps that had formed on it and made sliced
incisions through the damaged part of the tendon to force fresh blood to flow
through it, thus helping to promote rejuvenation of the Achilles. The skin was
then stapled back together and the operation is finished.
When I was comfortably sprawled out back in my room I decided to
have a look and see what my leg was now like. My new room mate had already gone
so I had plenty of privacy to be able to tear my covers back and inspect my
newly remodeled ankle. My ankle was only bandaged with protective padding
underneath. It wasn’t in a cast as the surgeon wanted it mobilised straight
away so that the tendon doesn’t heal tight.
Happy I was, now sorted; I moved my attention to my raging
thirst and hunger. I downed a full jug of water in minutes and after about an
hour I demolished the lovely food I was brought. Anyone who spends much time
with me will know I have a tiny bladder and usually go to the loo within ten
minutes of ever having a drink. So a full jug of watering wasn’t going to hang
around long inside me and it didn’t!
I nearly filled the bottle the nurse brought me in a couple of
minutes later. If she hadn’t have hurried I would probably have had my first
post op swim! She gave in after the second call from me for the loo and let me
get out of bed and walk to the toilet with my crutches; at last I was back on
my feet.
They let me leave just before 5pm, much to my relief as I was
really wanting to be back home by then. Ten hours stuck in a little room can
get boring for someone who is active as I tend to be. I left with a physio
appointment for the following week and a bag of dressing to give my nurse for
when she removed the staples in two weeks time.
I managed to vault myself up the stairs to my flat without to many
problems; I only had one wobble where I nearly fell backwards. Not bad for
someone who is as clumsy as me? Once in I spent a week doing very little,
mainly resting the ankle. I was allowed to put weight on the ankle immediately,
with the super nimble assistance of my crutches of course. The trip to the
physio a week later went well and I was just glad to be out in the fresh air
for a little while. The physio couldn’t really do much as I had quite a lot of
padding over the top of my foot to stop me over stretching the ankle while it
was healing. Wouldn’t want to fire the staples out of my skin, would I? She
just checked my movement in the ankle and made sure my toes still worked
properly, as the nerve to the foot can be 
damaged during the op which would lead to me never walking
properly again, never mind running! It was all fine though, so no worries
there.
I was sent home with some very light stretches to do and another
appointment for another week’s time. This would be after my staples had been
taken out so she could really get me started on the hard work then.
The day after my first physio visit I could hardly walk with
severe pain in my two smallest toes and the joints that connected them to my
feet. I got by that day but when it was even worse the next day, (day 9 post
op), I had to go back to the hospital to have the doctor check it was ok. After
a pretty quick examination he prescribed me up some stronger painkillers and
told me to try and keep using the foot as much as possible as we needed to keep
the Achilles flexible. It seemed,
because of the bandaging round my foot, I had been walking a bit strangely and
that had caused my ligaments in the foot to inflame. Panic over, it hadn’t been
a sign of my foot starting to die and needing chopping off. It had played on my
mind a little though as before the op my own GP advised me not to have surgery, as it 
could end up with my foot being amputated. He really gave me
great optimism with his positive and very cheery manner.
So the day arrived for my staples to come out and I was quite
excited at the thought of not having all the bandaging round my foot, I was
really getting sick of not being able to move my foot in a natural way. Oh how
naïve I can be. Staples popped out with no pain but the wound wasn’t fully
healed, so it was steri-stripped up and totally re-padded and bandaged. Still
no full movement in it, not good when I was off on holiday in just over a
week’s time.
The nurse at my doctors then said she wanted to change my dressing
again on the day I was due to go on holiday, so tried to sort an appointment out
for me. She couldn’t find a free slot for me and didn’t offer to try and
squeeze me in, even though it would have taken less than two minutes to change
the dressing and check the wound was healing properly. So that was me off on
holiday without any further medical care.
I went and bought my own dressings, bandages and antiseptic wipes
as I didn’t even get offered any by the nurse and
went up to the Lake District for a week. Nearly the entire
holiday was spent sitting in front of a roaring fire as I couldn’t get about
much still at this point. Half way through the week my Achilles started to feel
sore and inflamed and by the time I returned home it wasn’t getting pretty
worrying.
By the start of the following week I knew it really wasn’t right -
the ankle was now very swollen and sore. I rang the hospital for help and
actually got to see the surgeon, who immediately gave me antibiotics as the Achilles was infected. The following
day the wound actually burst open due to the swelling and the infection eating
away at the new skin that had only just formed. I was a bit gutted by this time
and was walking around with a face like a slapped backside!
Two doses of 500mg of flucloxacillin, (think that is spelt
correctly), later and a fortnight of worrying and the wound started to recover,
just in time for our last holiday of the year. Off we went to
Of course we couldn’t do very much as I still wasn’t very
good at walking and the ankle was very sore but at least we could go and have a
few days not worrying about doing housework. The ankle became very swollen on
both flights but settled down ok each time, so when I got home, I was ready to
really start getting in some good physio again and hopefully get back to work.
The physio promised to phone the day I got home, so we could make a
new appointment, she never did! So I just had to just crack on with the
stretches I know I needed to do. I will probably have to keep the stretches up
for the rest of my life or else I could end up back at square one.
After just under two months of my operation my wound finally healed
fully, thus allowing me to move on from post op recovery to rehabilitation.
That is, of course, another tale, which you will have to suffer reading at some
point. The real good news is that at three months post operation I am feeling
no pain in the Achilles and am back
running. I even made my return to club yesterday - it was good to be back.
Hopefully the ‘soon to be written’ rehabilitation story will have the same
positive news.
Written by: Charles Colby
Submitted: 18th
January 2011
Edited by: Brenda J Earnshaw
WRR Editor