Saturday, August 10, 2013

First Post

Hello! And welcome!  If you have stumbled onto this blog you may be looking for some more information about peroneal tendon surgery and recovery.  The purpose of this blog is to share my personal experience with surgery of the peroneal tendon and its recovery.  I am not a doctor, so please don't take this as medical advice.  Hopefully this blog will also help you in deciding if the surgery will be beneficial to you.

About me.  I am a husband and father of three, soon to be four.  I work as a mechanical engineer and live in Salt Lake City, Utah.  I enjoy golfing, running, hiking, camping, fly fishing, and being in the outdoors.  If I could do any of those things while making money to support my family I would do it in a heart beat.

My tendons.  I believe the peroneal tendons in my left ankle were first injured while training for a half marathon that I never ran near the end of 2011.  The pain was located at the 5th metatarsal in my left foot.  Sharp pain would shoot through my foot in that area every time my foot hit the ground.  This usually started after running six miles.  I figured I was training too hard and reduced my miles to three, a few times each week.  This worked at first and then the pain started to come back after running two to three miles.  In January of 2012 I decided it was time to see a podiatrist.

The doctor looked at my foot and diagnosed it with peroneal tendonitis.  He recommended that I rest the foot for eight months and only do low impact exercise for working out.  Reluctantly I kept to low impact activities for eight months.  In October of  2012 and the next few months after, I started to play basketball again.  My foot felt great, until I started to run distances longer than two miles.  The same thing happened again, followed by popping and pain each step I took.  This was near the end of January 2013, more than a year after I initially injured it.

My regular doctor told me to see an orthopedic surgeon that specializes in ankles and feet.  I put it off for some time and hoped that it would heal on its own.  It only seemed to get worse.  My ankle is stiff and sore when I first get up in the morning.  It will usually pop loud with my first steps of the day.  Towards the end of each day my foot will swell near the 5th metatarsal and just above my ankle.  In May 2013, after doing some research for an orthopedic surgeon I found one that I could trust and scheduled an appointment.  He must be good, since I couldn't get in to see him until the end of July.

After visiting with him and explaining my symptoms he examined my foot.  In a matter of minutes he said I most likely had a tear in my peroneal tendons.  He wanted to do an MRI to confirm his findings.  That same day I went in for an MRI. I wasn't expecting to get in so quick.  I guess some one else had cancelled their appointment and I happened to be there at the right time.  I was also surprised when the orthopedic surgeon I saw in the morning called me back that night to tell me the MRI confirmed a longitudinal tear in my peroneal tendon.  We discussed my options and decided it was best to do surgery on my ankle.  At this point it had already be more than a year and a half since I injured my foot.  He said physical therapy will help sometimes if done soon after the initial injury.

Since I had gone for so long without any improvements he felt that it would only get worse.  I agree with him, my ankle hasn't improved yet.  He also said that I didn't have to do the surgery right away, but that it would need to be done eventually.  I opted to schedule the surgery as soon as I could so I can get back to running and being more physical with out so much pain in my ankle.

I am scheduled to have surgery on Monday August 19, 2013.  I plan on keeping this blog updated with information on the surgery and my recovery.  Feel free to comment or send me any questions you may have.  Thanks for reading.

1 comment:

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