Finally, surgery is a go! After a week and a half of waiting, my insurance company approved the TOPAZ surgery for my achilles tendinosis. My doctor warned me that sometimes insurance won’t cover it, so we’ve been in complete limbo waiting for their decision. If they weren’t going to cover TOPAZ, I would be discussing traditional achilles surgery, which isn’t ideal at all. Thankfully, that’s not the direction we have to go.
So my pre-op is Monday, 2/15 and surgery is 7:30 am Wednesday, 2/17. You’d think after struggling with this achilles for so long I’d be excited. And I am, but I’m also having huge amounts of doubt. Since I haven’t been running, my achilles is more bothersome than painful. What if my achilles isn’t really that bad? What if surgery makes it worse? What if I’m just being a wimp? What if it it fixes my achilles, but the heel pain comes back? What if my right achilles has the same problem down the road? What if, what if, what if…
I know this will sound absurd to some, but I think I need to go for a run. Yes, I know it will hurt. That’s the point. If I run and I am reminded of the extreme pain that accompanies it, I will feel validated. Then I can easily proceed with the surgery without all this doubt. Running to remind myself that it hurts really bad might not be the best decision that I’ve ever made, but I have a whole slew of bad decisions on my record and this is far from the worst.
Now I have to go into preparation mode. I think I’ll only be away from work for a day or two, but I’ll be on crutches for a while too and as I saw a friend of mine on crutches last year, nothing is easy when you’re hobbling around with sticks in your armpits. Major grocery shopping, clean the house, get caught up at work, get as much homework done as possible – I have a lot to do in the next week and a half. I know I’m not the only one who goes into hyper-planning when things like this come up, right? How do you prepare?
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You have a date! I understand your doubt. But I don’t think your doctor would suggest surgery unless your MRI showed that things were that bad. I’m so glad you’re going to get TOPAZ instead of traditional surgery! Crutches are a total hassle. But people are so nice! I found that a backpack worked really well instead of my usual shoulder bag. Just heard from a friend that he has achilles tendinosis. I’m going to put him in touch with your blog because he’s a runner, too. He’s trying to do Ironman with Fletch in June.
CA, tell your friend I may have pics up here after the surgery.
I totally understand how you feel. I hope that everything goes well and you will be back up your feet in no time. Just think of how nice it will be to run pain-free again
Have a great night!
You are so lucky your insurance responded so soon. My doctor sent a request to my insurace almost 4 weeks ago for this exact procedure and I still haven’t heard anything.
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