Wednesday, November 05, 2008

A 'clip' on my Achilles

After experiencing a nagging pain around my right heel in June, I have not been running since then.

I limp slightly when I wake up each morning, and my right heel hurts if I run or even do a brisk walk. After resting for three months, the pain was still there. I finally consulted with my doctor who referred me to a podiatrist at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

My appointment was on Election Day, Nov 4 2008. As I filled up their questionnaire online, I could arrive 10 minutes prior to appointment in contrast to 30 minutes and the specialist kept thanking me for filling it online. Strange.

I had to wear a lead gonad shield to protect my heirloom from x ray during three exposures.

Instead of developing the films, x rays were downloaded to a computer where I saw some bone growing around my Achilles tendon, thus restricting my movements. My diagnosis was Achilles tendinitis.

His advice was to stretch my calf muscle four times daily to compensate for the shortening of the Achilles tendon.

My advice: Warm up before running and down after running. Living with it is troublesome.

1 comment:

Charles Sng said...

oh gosh, a literal Achilles heel! :P

Take care bro! Hope this is just a small treatable aliment that will recover by itself (+ 4 times a day stretch) soon... :)