Surgery Update

Yesterday morning I checked in for surgery on my achilles tendon at 6:00 a.m. This first picture is a comparison of my legs before leaving for surgery. You can see the area around the achilles tendon on my right leg is much more defined than the left leg due to the swelling I get on the tendon of my left leg. My surgeon, Dr. Tuvi Mendel would be performing arthroscopic surgery to clean up the tendon. Jen drove me to the hospital along with our son Owen and we got checked in. I was given a really sweet gown with pink flowers on it to wear during the surgery...lovely. In addition I was also given a cool cap to go with the ridiculous gown. I'm not sure why the need for the cap when I don't have any hair. I was a little nervous going into the surgery because I wasn't sure whether this was an injury I should be operating on or if it would heal on its' own if I stopped working out for a month or two. Because it is arthroscopic the recovery is expected to be much less than a traditional full blown surgery where they open me up.

At about 7:00 the anesthesiologist gave me a mask to breath into and said he was going to give me good oxygen to breath in. His trick worked as the next thing I knew it was an hour and a half later and the surgery was complete. I also found my leg to be in a cast. Jen was with me and said Dr. Mendel assured her he found plenty of damage to my tendon when he went in. When I awoke the first thing to go through my mind was that I forgot to call for a substitute teacher for my classroom! I immediately got on Jen's phone and called our office at school. Of course they had taken care of my mistake and I think they were laughing at my loopiness than hadn't worn off from the anesthesia. Just after 9:00 a.m. Dr. Mendel came by to talk to me about the surgery. He said it was something that was definitely needed which made me feel better about the decision. He said when he got in he was able to see lots of damage to the tendon and even some bleeding coming from the tendon. He showed me pictures of what a normal tendon looks like and then showed me what mine looked like. The pictures resembled some kind of shredded beef like you would get on an Arby's sandwich. He felt very good about the surgery. He said the clean up was more than what he expected and I couldn't decide if that is why I was in a cast or if it was because he didn't trust me to stay off the leg for a week. He didn't think I should go back to work this week. I'm going to see him on Monday morning to get the cast off and begin rehab. After that appointment I can get back to my classroom where I've had lots of fun since taking back over for my student teacher over the past week. I'm not a big fan of laying on the couch all day with my leg in the air but I know this is part of the rehab for getting healthy. I was supposed to race on May 22nd in Galena, IL and I e-mailed them to let them know it was highly unlikely that I would be healthy to race. I asked them if I could defer my entry to next year but apparently they don't like doing things like that even in extreme cases of injury because they responded back that they do not refund or transfer entries for any reason. That was disappointing especially since I won the race last year. I didn't expect a refund but thought at least they could let me defer to next year.

The following picture was generously sent to me by David Fathauer who was in Sullivan braving the cold, rain, and wind to get pictures of the race. Thanks to him for sending that to me. I'm very excited to begin the "comeback" and return to activity soon. Thanks for reading. DREAM BIG!