Rockin' On ...

Finally, 51 days after the accident and six weeks after the operation to repair my ruptured Achilles tendon the cast came off.  Here's what my scar after surgery - and following a bath and a lot of scrubbing to remove dead, flaky skin! - looks like ...

Achilles surgical scar

I've now got a CAM (Controlled Ankle Movement) boot which allows me to put weight on that foot again and walk around, albeit in a pretty awkward fashion. Here's what the boot looks like ...

CAM boot

I've been doing a bit of research and it appears that there are two schools of thought in terms of rehab after Achilles tendon surgery. The treatment employed in my case (six weeks in a cast with no weight bearing, followed by six weeks in a CAM walker with plantar flexion periodically increased during that time) is the more conservative of the two. The other school of thought is to get the patient into a CAM walker much earlier - sometimes directly after surgery - to minimise loss of muscle tone in the lower leg and loss of mobility in the ankle. Here's hoping that my rehab will not be overly slowed by having had a more conservative approach with my therapy.

Anyway, it's great to be more mobile again. On Sunday, a few days after the boot went on, Di and I headed down to the Australian Wooden Festival for a look around. The weather has been brilliant for almost a week now so it was a very pleasant outing, although I was a bit sore after my first real foray out in the boot. The sole of the boot has a rocker sole and progress is made not with a normal gait but with a kind of rocking motion on the affected leg, hence the title of this post.

Today is another gorgeous day, so after a visit to Tas Caffé to replenish our coffee supplies we went for a stroll (Di strolled, I rocked) along the Derwent River in Glenorchy, near MONA. We would have gone a little further than our 25 minutes took us, but the end of the walkway was out of bounds due to a "highly sensitive" photoshoot that was taking place. As it turned out, that was probably enough at this stage anyway.

Here's a view looking back towards the Derwent Entertainment Centre with Mt Wellington in the background ...

The DEC with Mt Wellington behind

Looking up at the mountain like that makes me long to be up there hiking and climbing. Life is moving along pretty slowly at the moment but I am looking forward to gradually getting more active. Cheers for now ...