What to Expect Pre-Op for Achilles Surgery

I would like McDreamy to be my surgeon tomorrow, and I’ll take a side of McSteamy. Ok, ok, in all seriousness, this is how things rolled out for my surgery. For many people who read this blog, this is probably pretty boring, but I want to let people who are considering achilles surgery know what to expect.

So, I first received a call from my doctor’s assistant telling me the topaz surgery was approved by my insurance and when my surgery was scheduled for. He also scheduled me for my pre-op appointment where my doctor would go over details about the surgery with me. My doctor is going to be out of town later in the month and he wanted to have some time after surgery before he’d be unavailable, so once insurance was lined up, everything else went very fast.

About a week before surgery, just a few days after finding out surgery was scheduled, I received a phone call from the hospital admissions (or some department) to go over my medical history, what medications I’m currently on, etc. They gave me instructions not to shave my legs 4-5 days before surgery. Why can I go what seems like months without shaving my legs in the winter, but when they told me I couldn’t, I had to do it? So I shaved my legs 3 days before surgery and I was very careful. I think this “intake” is done at the hospital some times so I was very glad to hear I could take care of this over the phone. Another nice thing is that I didn’t have to make any phone calls. They called me.

At my pre-op appointment, my doctor went over all of the risks again – infection, weakening of the achilles, etc. He gave me a prescription for percocet and told me where to go to rent crutches. For the drugs, he did say that percocet is probably “over kill,” but he’d rather give me more than I need than not enough and have me calling him and have to go get a new prescription for something stronger. Because the pain medication is a narcotic, I think you have to have a prescription in hand rather than having a doctor call it in to the pharmacy. I could be totally wrong, but that was the vibe I got.

A funny side note: My doctor told me that when I’m in the “no weight bearing” phase, if something happens and I fall or trip, I should put weight on my foot if it prevents me from falling on my head or face. Bear weight on my foot to save my face because if something happens to my foot, he can fix that. For some reason, I thought that was hilarious. The thought of people landing on their face to spare their foot just cracks me up. I don’t know if I could do that if I wanted to.

Anyhow, today, the day before surgery, I got a call from pre-registration at the hospital to confirm my address, insurance, emergency contact, etc. I have instructions not to eat or drink anything after midnight. As if I’ll be up that late! I got a pedicure tonight so I have cute toes poking out of the boot and went grocery shopping to make sure my guys have food in the house. I won’t be cooking for a few days so that means I bought a ton of processed, prepared foods. They’re in heaven, I’m disgusted.

We’ll arrive at the hospital at 5:30 am tomorrow morning, and surgery is scheduled for 7:30. The surgery is expected to take at least 1.5 hours and including time to wake up afterward, I’ll be out of the hospital and on my way home sometimes between noon and 2:00 pm.

I’m ready! Stay tuned to see how it goes…

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Tagged as: achilles, achilles surgery, achilles tendinosis, achillies tendinitis, Pharmaceutical drug, running injury, surgery, topaz surgery