I tore my achilles!!!

Well, let's catch up on a few things. First, 9 days ago, on April 24, 2009 I was playing in the third game of a semifinal volleyball match and heard a loud snap. Not much pain followed, but fast forward one week and I just had surgery to repair a 95% torn achilles. For those of you that don't know much about me, I am 38 years old and relatively active. The first night after surgery was horrible, but lucky for me I have a wife that was very sympathetic to my situation. Neither of us got much sleep that first night as that was the most pain I have ever experienced. The pain block was the worst part. They actually stuck me 3 times with pain block (guess I have stubborn nerves) so it took a LONG time for it to wear off. As it wears off, parts of my foot were numb and other parts were in pain. It is very uncomfortable and for me hard to deal with. I was much happier once the block completely wore off and there was just pain (about 24 hours for me, but I would think less in most cases.) Another thing that did not help was that they wrote out my prescription for one 5mg percoset every six hours. A nurse from the surgery center called to check up on me the next day and informed me that I could take 1 or 2 tablets every 4 hours as needed. Needless to say I feel better now... Sunday night (about 30 hours post op) I started to feel even better. I actually discovered that the least painful way for me to get any sleep was to stick a pillow or two between my legs and sleep on my side. I wouldn't recommend this for long periods of time as I don't know that it provides the best drainage, but I was actually able to sleep for two+ hours at time. (I have never really been able to sleep on my back even when healthy.)
By the way, my doctor took the route of an open cast with ace bandages to hold it on instead of a full cast. He says this will be on for two weeks and then it will be booted up.

This brings us up to date on the whole achilles thing. I will continue to post more about my rehab here as well as talk about new robots and upcoming events.

Speaking of upcoming events. The Manayunk arts festival in Philadelphia is just around the corner! Of course with my achilles situation I don't know how things will play out, but it provides a stong incentive for me to get better quickly. Also helping to provide some incentive is the ticket I purchased to Costa Rica 2-3 days before the achilles snap. I leave the day after Manayunk on my trip. My original hope was to be bodyboarding and playing volleyball all week. Now, I am just hoping that I can walk without my boot! We will see, but 8 weeks seems doable. I will probably wear it on the flight to try to keep swelling down. Of course seeing my friends do all this stuff without me will be pure torture, but maybe I can channel those thoughts into warming up properly in the future.