Sgt. Howard wrote:Resection of the Gastrocnemius is a procedure far more successful than the resection of the tendon itself- the fascia and musculature is divided diagonally and repaired in a 'slipped' fashion to extend the muscle itself. Far stronger repair than cutting the damn tendon with a much faster recuperative time- Glytch, I am assuming there was a time when you could only walk on your toes?
Not quite. There was a time when I was little when I preferred to walk on my toes when barefoot. The big problem, however, was sports.
I used to play baseball, soccer, and/or football because my dad wouldn't shut up about me not playing sports. However, I couldn't run long distances... Because the act of running hurt my ankles. Towards the end, I couldn't run to second base without falling flat on my face because my ankles suddenly hurt so bad. Dad said it looked like a sniper had shot me in the back. That's when he finally realized "oh, my kid isn't being a lazy wimp, he actually has a problem that needs to be fixed."
When we finally went to a doctor, he looked at my Achilles' tendons and where they joined with the bones in my foot, and he told us he was amazed I hadn't popped them off already. They were frayed and ripping out of my bones.
I had surgery one leg at a time, and I built up a lot of arm strength using crutches that whole time. I also got good at crutch self defense, because bullies, including former football teammates, thought I was faking it and kept trying to push my crutches out from under me and make me put weight on the leg that was currently healing. Crutches make damn fine clubs if you know how to flip one into the right kind of grip in a hurry, and my preexisting martial arts trai I g made it so I could hold my own fairly well while hopping around on one leg.
My legs, ankles, and feet work perfectly now, and I only have very slight nerve damage which only flares up occasionally.