The Story of My Ankle

Here's what happened, in case you didn't already know...

Back in March I was at kickboxing. The girl next to me was doing amazing kicks and the instructor was yelling, "Faster! Harder!" I was like, "I can kick as well as this girl!" Trying to go faster I lost my form and struck the heavy bag with the inside of my right ankle instead of my shin. I was in pretty bad pain for the next few days and finally had to go to the doctor. After trying physical therapy and only getting worse, in April they finally ordered an MRI. The MRI showed a partial tear in my tendon and what they called "thickening" of the tendon. I was immobolized in a walking boot for four weeks and then supposed to restart physical therapy.

After four weeks immobolized in the boot, I still wasn't really better. The doctor wanted to put me in a weight bearing cast - which was a major problem since it was my right ankle and my job required a lot of walking and driving everyday. Instead she decided to keep me in the boot four more weeks. I was no longer sure that this doctor knew what she was doing and decided to get a second opinion.

The second doctor I saw gave me a brace to wear that fit in a shoe and wanted to see me back in six weeks, saying if it wasn't better by then we would need to talk about surgery. Being the "doctor snob" that I am, I didn't like this guy either or the prospect of surgery and decided to get a third opinion.

In June I saw the third doctor who thought that since it hadn't healed I should go ahead with surgery to repair the tendon. Tired of all of this, I scheduled the surgery for July and made plans to move home when my lease was up in July and to leave my job since all of the driving and walking was not allowing me to heal.

Before I went ahead with surgery I decided to see one more doctor - the doctor I originally tried to see (an orthopaedic surgeon) but was sent to the podiatrist in the same practice (the first doctor, who wanted to cast me when I needed to drive). Dr. Buchanan turned out to be amazing, and I have now learned to be a better advocate for myself - if I had insisted on seeing him instead of the podiatrist when I first called, all of this running around might have been avoided. Dr. Buchanan was sure that I would still heal, but that it would just take a long time. I cancelled the surgery, went back to PT, and stuck it out with Dr. Buchanan.

In August, my physical therapist Cristina, who is also amazing, reviewed my case after I had seen another therapist there for a few weeks. Cristina felt that I was not improving and was pretty sure I needed surgery at this point. She basically kicked me out of PT and sent me back to the doctor.

There's no need to tell you I was pretty frustrated at this point. I felt like I was losing months of my life as I had been on activity restrictions since March, had left my apartment and job, and was still in pain! This time my mom went with me to Dr. Buchanan.

Even though it was the end of August/beginning of September, Dr. Buchanan still thought that I could heal without surgery but wanted to put me in a weight-bearing cast for six weeks. He told us there was a 70-80% chance that I would heal that way. My mom and I saw this as still a pretty good chance that after another six weeks I would still not heal and need surgery. We advocated for surgery, and after reviewing everything with us, Dr. Buchanan agreed. We scheduled surgery for September 15.