Brand new to the dope as of today, really cool! Here goes, I have just broken BOTH of my heels. Some of the worst pain I have been in to date. I jumped off a 6ft wall, in flip flops and wasn’t wearing my cape!(Patron may or may not have been a factor) Any advice would be appreciated ie. anyone who can relate, when I might walk again, how long the pain will stick around, physical therapy exercises etc. Im in the second week and opted out of the surgery due to risk/reward not seeming to be worth it. Thanks in advance for any insight. Wish I had a much better story…
We chatted a bit on the old thread - how old are you? That’s a big factor in healing. The younger the better.
Hopefully other Dopers will chime in but two heels at once is rough - you can’t compensate on your good foot. If the doctors said you can go surgery free that’s great but by all means do all the exercises and more, as much as you possibly can. Otherwise you may eat painillers until you die, and that sucks.
For me it was no weight for 2 months or so, ramp up to use over 4-6 months, generally normal a year later (though not quite right even today). Clearly your injury was less since non-surgery was an option.
Best advice? Lose yourself in distractions… like surfing the Dope for unrelated topics!
Good luck!
I can sympathize. Back in January I injured my Achilles tendon, and after wearing a cast for 11 weeks, it’s still injured. And the cast somehow injured the bottom of the heel, so walking is extremely painful. I’m now in another doctor’s care, and he assures me that surgery is not necessary, but recovery will be lengthy. Oh, and this is in addition to severe knee pain.
The worst thing is that I’ll be 70 later this year, and I’m diabetic. I have to accept the very real possibility that it will never really heal.
At least I didn’t do anything unbelievably stupid, like jumping off a 6-foot wall in flip-flops.
I gotta ask – did you learn anything from this?
Oh geez. And you started off with a typo in your username. 
That doesn’t bode well…
Probably not the same thing, but maybe the same effect. I had a cousin who had some congenital thing where she had to have both her heels broken, to fix them. And she had to have this surgery more than once.
The first time, when she was in her late teens, she opted for doing one, then doing the other one. This was about 6 months in a cast on one, then a cast on the other, plus physical therapy. While she was limping around on the first one, she did something to her hip (maybe it was her knee; it’s been a long time, and it wasn’t me). (Note that I mean 3 months per foot, for the casts.)
In her early 30s she had to have it done again, and that time she said the hell with it, do them both at once and put me in a wheelchair. I think she was supposed to stay off them entirely for 4 weeks, so in a wheelchair (which you can rent). She didn’t have to take a lot of time off work because she ran a yoga studio and had her teachers take her classes for the duration. She was good as new in about 6 months, however, in her case “new” wasn’t all that good to begin with.
Anyway, if it can be fixed without surgery that’s probably better. Find a good physical therapist. Good luck.
thanks, I was almost starting to loose faith in the dope as I hadn’t gotten any responses, but 5 more came up today and you saw it and commented. I will make a shortcut to this site from now on. Thanks again for the feedback as I am in a pickle.
I know spelling is a chore when your taking percoset! hope you catch it:)
don’t spell your username incorrectly when posting in a new forum looking for advice?
thank you
thanks again for your advice
If I had said
I was trying to get the kitten out of the tree would you still think it was unbelievably stupid.
Trying to get the cat would be ok, but how would that be an excuse for jumping off the wall?
Maybe the tree was on fire?
Sorry to hear about your injury 2brookeheels, I hope it heals soon with no complications.
And maybe alternate drinks with a glass of water next time /mom-voice.
I was waiting to reply until I found out whether you meant the heels on your shoes or your anatomical heels.
I suppose it is a silly thing to wait for. I could have just asked. But for some reason the question just left me boggled.
I know that is definitely not your fault. I have never broken a heel and I wish I had some good constructive advice to give you.
I’m now wondering whether it made any sense to post this or whether I should have just left it alone. But I decided to post something because you seemed to feel slighted that no one had replied to your thread.
I hope you have a good recovery and that if you are in pain, you get all the pain meds that you need.
Will your job insurance cover your rehab? Or is it a big problem for you? When I worked for the phone company, we could take time off for rehab in the event of injury and we got 70 percent of our salary for as long as we were recovering.
Some people took years and years to recover and they were paid 70 percent of their salary during the entire time. Pretty sweet deal. I often wonder what it would have been like to just have retired early with an injury. The company paid two thirds of our salary if we left the company and retired forever. But some people took advantage and were caught doing things they could never do with the kinds of injuries they were pretending to have. It was kind of funny actually because the company made sure they publicized these cases to discourage anyone else from trying to cheat them by claiming phony injuries (almost always bad backs).
Here is the pisser, I was out celebrating. Was supposed to start a new job that Monday, this happened that Saturday. So I was in-between jobs. Talk about the worst timing…
If you truly broke both of your heel bones and refused surgery please follow up with some Physical Therapy as you are going to have a hard time getting around for awhile.
Trust me on this.
You didn’t state your age. That will be a factor and our non-medical advice is just opinion and sympathy.
See a real doctor instead of asking random strangers on a message board.
And Welcome to the SDMB. Let us know how it turns out.
My father broke a heel in 1948 when he was 42. Maybe things were different in those days, but he was on crutches for 3 months and in a walking cast for 3 more. But he pretty much recovered, although his foot would get sore in wet weather. I suspect they are not nearly so conservative these days. When I broke my ankle and they put a plate in, I was told to put weight on it and walk as far as I could. Which was a mile to start out and grew.
Good luck.
I guess the doctors can’t tell you about the recovery time, as they are not very sure about the state of all the soft tissue. Worry about that after the bones heal…
My advice ?
- Land with the toes and knees ready to be shock absorbers… even arms ,eg roll forward onto them…
Your “on the heels” landing changed your velocity a non-zero amount, but in nearly zero time… thats a high deacceleration and hence large force, spread over small area. - Do jumps like that only in shock absorbs shoes, something to reduce forces by spreading them over time and area.
I did something very similar (landing hard on the heel). I did not actually break the “heel” per se, but fractured the base of the tibia. Extremely painful.
Here’s how the recovery went:
- in a cast for just a few days until I could see the doctor. Then
- in one of those plastic braces that goes up your shin/calf for MONTHS (can’t recall exactly how long, but it was maybe 3 months or so). On crutches which really suck. I actually managed to drive (a manual, if you can believe it), but I don’t suppose you will be able to. Perhaps the only saving grace was being able to get/use an handicapped parking tag !
- after the brace came off, the ortho doc says “bone is good. I’m done !” And it was then off to physical therapy.
(now the bad part) - during those months with the brace, all the soft tissue involved with the movement of the foot, “settles” (or “locks”) into place. That is, the purpose of the brace is to keep your foot immobile - which it does really well. But while your foot is immobile to allow the bone to heal, all the soft tissue loses it’s elasticity and kind of “locks” into place. PT is ALL about regaining that elasticity so that you can walk again. And your leg muscles will atrophy while in the brace, so you need to rebuild your strength and BALANCE to be able to walk again.
The bones will heal on their own without much work. Getting to walk again will require PT. And PT can be gruelling - but the more you put into it, the faster/better you will recover. - The “fun” part is that I had to battle with the insurance to get “enough” PT - they allot a set amount, and after you use up those sessions, you need to go through this approval process to get more. Sometimes this goes seemlessly, sometimes it doesn’t. You continue to do your “homework” (exercises and stretches), but I didn’t have access to some of the more specialized PT equipment.
- After the PT gets you to “mostly normal”, you then continue to work on the last kinks. And that takes some time. But your body is pretty resilient, and will heal itself pretty well. I gave my PT a framed picture I took from a 5-day backpacking trip I managed to take the following year.