Bone Spur tearing achilles tendon - post surgery infection and pain years later

by Nancy Nagy
(Waterford, MI)

In June of 2011 I had surgery to remove a bone spur. Once the doc was in there he discovered it was slicing my achilles and it could have snapped any day. He rounded my heal and reconstructed my achilles.

Today, I still suffer from extreme pain & swelling and I have limped ever since. It took a very long time for the wound to close if ever.

It is very sensitive to touch still. I still have a soft lump and sometimes a discharge of a soft cheesy material that I just pull out like a cyst. It keeps coming back. I tried Keflex, did not work. I remember in the beginning recovery after the cast, I would constantly have to wear bandaids because the wound kept leaking puss.

In July of 2012 I fell and broke 4 bones in the same leg. In August of 2012 I was out of my cast in six weeks. When they removed the cast the area on the back of my heel was black. I was then put in a walking boot and after 2 weeks in that boot, my achilles injury became infected.

Now I am 10 weeks after surgery with no walking boot and saw my doctor today. He is sending me to a specialist because that old pain from the achilles surgery has returned and its infected again. He informed me that the pins inside my heel holding it together may have to be removed.

I am devastated. I have not been able to sleep on my back because the slightest pressure on my heel is extremely painful.

I am tired of spending my life in a cast and boot.

Has this ever happened to anyone? I am so upset that I cannot walk correctly and still have a limp with extreme pain in my heel everyday. Are there any recommendations?


----



Joshua Answers:

Hi Nancy.

That sounds like a not fun experience, all the way around.

Let's see what we can do to get you feeling better at this point.

1. Get your vitamin D level checked. ASAP. Then let me know what the level is.

I guarantee that your Vit D is low, and that plays a role in your body's inability to heal, fight infection, bone healing and strength, etc.

Vitamin D is super important for all levels of body operation, and you need to get your level up ASAP.


2. Magnesium. Vitamin D and Magnesium are both required for your body to utilize calcium. Many surgery patients that get pins and other metal put into their bones, experience a scenario where the metal has to be removed or reinserted because (basically) the bone doesn't heal/grow around the bone, and/or it degrades, the pin gets loose and needs to be removed. The doctors are forced to call the surgery a failure, and never mention that they totally ignored your body's nutritional status and ability to 'accept' the surgery.

See Magnesium For Tendonitis for an entry into that conversation.


3. Regardless of the location of Tendonitis, it's all the same dynamic. You might not have tendonitis per se, but you have all the factors of tendonitis involved (too tight muscle and connective tissue, inflammation, nutritional insufficiency/deficiency, etc) and that's affecting your current state.

See: What Is Tendonitis to fully understand what's involved there.


4. You have specific injury/specific location of problem, but I suspect we first need to deal with your nutritional state. Which is really saying that we need to deal with your body's ability/inability to, literally, heal well.


5. See: Bone Spur


RELATED READING

See:

See: Two Years Since Plantar Fasciitis Bone Spur Surgery And Everything Is Worse


QUESTIONS:

A. How old are you?

B. How's your digestion and your energy levels?

C. Did I read it right, you're heel's been infected for over a year?

D. What happened with that black spot on the heel? 'Black' is bad, super bad.

E. Have you ever been given a fluoroquinolone antibiotic like Levaquin, Cipro, Avelox, etc? (If not, you may want to consider NOT ever taking that class of antibiotics unless it's a life threatening situation).

F. What's the current status of the pins, etc?







----------------------
Please reply using the comment link below. Do not submit a new submission to answer/reply, it's too hard for me to find where it's supposed to go.

And, comments have a 3,000 character limit so you may have to comment twice.
-----------------------



Joshua Tucker, B.A., C.M.T.
The Tendonitis Expert
www.TendonitisExpert.com