Achilles tendonitis sucks. So does my insurance!

[chrisinhouston]

I thought I posted this the other day but I must have forgotten to hit the Post button and it just went away.

Anyway, just as my wife and I were getting our new walking regime up and running I began to have a lot of pain that came and went in my left heel. Some days it wasn't so bad and other days it was like the proverbial "red hot poker" where the Achilles tendon meets the heel bone. I think working on the kitchen remodeling job didn't help with lots of ladder climbing and squatting down to do things at floor level.

I finally went to a foot doctor and she did Xrays and a full exam and found that I have Achilles Tendonitis and a big bone spur forming from the tendon being pulled off of the bone. I had to wear a big removable cast like boot for 2 weeks except when sleeping. That made my remodeling even harder. Finally I got to take it off and she prescribed 4 weeks of physical therapy, 3 times each week. As I left for Hawaii upon getting the boot off I just found a PT here and really liked him. I saw him once last week and will see him again next week.

Ok, so here is the good and the bad... American health care may be good but our access to it and the actual insurance mostly sucks! My wife gets ours through work, one of the oddities here as your job is your insurance! Her company is small so the plan is not too good but still costs a lot!

And it makes no sense, my visit to the podiatrist, her exam, xrays of my foot and the boot/cast cost me a mere $30! However the physical therapy which will help me overcome this and learn how not to make it happen again cost $55 per visit. So for the 12 visits the Dr. prescribed it would cost me almost $700! So I decided I could probably do 3 visits while here and the PT understood, he was surprised at how little my insurance covered!

Now another thing on this subject... Yesterday while at the Aloha stadium wondering around the Swap Meet I found a booth selling those magnetic hematite bracelets and necklaces. They were promoting them as a healing tool, so I bought one for my left ankle just above the tendon at the heel. I've never worn much more than my wedding ring or signet ring so an ankle bracelet is something new.

So I wore it all day yesterday and slept with it on and now my heel feels a lot better. Pretty strange and cheaper than the PT.

Oh well, enough bandwidth on this!

[ZenGum]

US healthcare system is crook? No news there.

Chin up, old chap, time wounds all heels, or something.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I wonder if wearing the anklet keeps you subconsciously more careful?

[chrisinhouston]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

I wonder if wearing the anklet keeps you subconsciously more careful?

I don't know but anything is possible. The issue for me is that the big muscles in my calf tend to shrink up and tension up when the tendon is in the resting position... toe down. So I tend to do a lot of stretching exercises now to stretch the calf muscle. But today is weird as I got out of bed and normally my tendon is tender since my sleep makes me relax the muscle and the tendon but today it has been fine. Might be the best $24 I ever spent!

[Sundae]

I had to read that with my hand over my mouth.
Bloody hell.

When I pulled a muscle (proper pulled a muscle, not like when people say it and in fact it just hurts a bit) I had an X-ray, crutches, physio - inc ultrasound - and painkillers. Oh and paid time off work. It hurt like buggery, but at least I did not have to trade care for cost.

All the best. Sorry to hear it happened at all, let alone when you were really hitting your stride (bad pun, but intended) with the exercise.