20 Jul Look Before You Leap – I Shattered My Heel But Astym Therapy Is Giving Me A Fast Recovery
It all began when I decided to take a short-cut to soccer practice and ended when I shattered my heel. Wearing soccer cleats with very little padding, I hopped a fence but didn’t notice it was on a retaining wall. I dropped 9 feet onto pavement, stuck the landing, and immediately knew that something was wrong. It turns out, I had shattered my right heel into 200+ pieces. That saying “look before you leap” actually makes sense now.
The surgery put me back together using a plate secured to my heel with 8 pins. After the surgery, the doctor recalled “it was like someone had dropped an egg and I had to put it back together.” At this point, he informed me that my surgery was a success but my journey to recovery had just begun. Now the hard part…physical therapy.
It started with an evaluation and a determination that 14 weeks of inactivity had resulted in an extremely limited range of motion and a large amount of atrophy. I progressed well under the guidance of Audra Jahn at CORE Orthopaedic Medical Center in Encinitas, CA. With traditional therapy I was learning to walk again and began to regain strength in my arch, ankle, calf, and hip. However, after 36 sessions (2 per week) my progress had plateaued.
Still in considerable pain, this pain was limiting my movement and more importantly slowing my recovery. After consulting with my surgeon, he determined that scar tissue was causing a majority of the pain. The staff at CORE then suggested Astym therapy as a solution to my problem. Having never heard of Astym, I was naturally a skeptic but that all changed the moment therapy began.
After the very first session with Pam Cloud I noticed an immediate improvement in my range of motion and experienced a little less pain. By the end of my third session, areas of my foot and ankle were no longer experiencing any pain whatsoever. Other areas had the pain reduced by 50%. I was surprised at how quickly I was seeing the positive results.
I’m currently continuing Astym therapy in order to achieve a full recovery. While the treatments were initially bothersome, I have experienced less discomfort over time with each session. Exercising has become considerably easier and my limp had started to disappear as I retrain myself to now walk without pain.
I can’t recommend this therapy enough to people and wish I had only begun it sooner. My progress to full recovery is now on the fast track thanks to Astym, Pam’s knowledgeable guidance, and her expert treatment.
John Rich, Astym Patient
Encinitas, California
CORE Orthopaedic
