Regular visitors know that last March I stepped on a patch of black ice on our front stairs and went for a wee flight, breaking and dislocating my right ankle, and for bonus points damaging a ligament. This left me with 14 screws Humpty-Dumptying my right ankle assembly and fibula back together.

At a certain point after my surgery, I started going to physiotherapy sessions twice each week. This helped me build strength and improve my balance on my right leg. Somewhere along the way, though, I developed some nasty tendonitis in my left heel, compensating for the problem on my right side. At that point my physiotherapist started treating the tendonitis too, and I was doing exercises for both.

After Christmas, I started to experience rapid improvement. I had a physiotherapy session three weeks ago and we agreed I would try three weeks without a session and see how I did.  In fact I continued to improve. The tendonitis in my left heel became negligible. Most days I didn’t notice any discomfort at all. I had no pain at all in my right foot/ankle/leg, and I noticed my balance was improving (my test was one-leg balancing)

Unless I experience a set-back, today was my last physiotherapy session. I’ll continue to do heel raises on stairs, which seems to help out the tendonitis a lot.

I did my physio at Etobicoke physiotherapy (in the weird Sobeys mini-mall at Kipling and Queensway) and I’d like to give a shout out to Natalia, my physiotherapist, who is super-fantastic.