Learning to walk

It’s now been 11 weeks, 3 days and approximately 6 hours since I ruptured my Achilles tendon, and to be honest, I’m thoroughly bored of the whole endeavour. The novelty value of the occasional banker offering me a seat on the train has worn off, and now I just want to be able to walk normally again.

After the operation I took a couple of weeks off work, and then worked from home for an additional week. Since then I’ve tried to carry on with life as much as normal, and here’s a few things that I’ve learned:

• Six pints on a night out is my current limit. Beyond that, crutch-based travel becomes hazardous.
• If you’re flying on a pikey airline, pack some crutches and a spaceboot. It gets you straight to the front of the queue, skipping past the numpties who bought Speed Boarding tickets. You also get to travel on those little buggy things around Gatwick.
• You can still go to festivals. I managed to go to Glastonbudget, and drink and party till the early hours. Only downside is that camping in a field full of feral Midlanders is a sure-fire way to get an infection.
• Finding a good place to put your crutches once you’ve sat down in a pub/bar/restaurant/train carriage is nigh on impossible.
• Dressing up in a suit and going to a wedding isn’t very comfortable. Particularly when the spaceboot has to sit over the suit trousers.

And so, after nine weeks of speeding around on one leg and crutches (faster than 98.94% of all pedestrians), I’m now fully weight-bearing. This means that I now walk slowly and more weirdly than before whilst my withered Mr Burns leg attempts to grow some muscles and man-up a bit. I’m still wearing my ridiculous Iron Man spaceboot outside the house (as seen below, enjoying the luxurious comfort of Easyjet), but I think I’ll ditch it forever this weekend.

The only complication so far has been when the wound became infected in a field in Leicestershire, and the subsequent 17-day course of Flucloxacillin (Penicillin) which I’m slowly coming to the end of. And I had my first physio appointment this morning, although it seems that they don’t actually do much other than give me a list of exercises and stretches to do. Basically, it’s up to me to do as much as possible to rebuildthe muscles and tendons, which seems a bit of a fiddle, but hopefully they know more than me.

In the meantime, I have already begun construction on a time machine so I can travel back to make sure that Achilles’ parents dip his heel properly in the Styx. Twice, just to make sure.