Tenex Surgery - Achilles Tendinopathy

I've got been having nagging achilles issues for about a year now. Its not debilitating or super painful but I definitely can't run and I'm afraid to fall on it climbing as that always sets me back significantly.  I am getting an ultrasound on Friday but my doctor already suggested that worst case, if it shows a partial tear, he would suggest Tenex surgery. Doctor seems legit but I havent found great results from this surgery googling around.  Does anyone have any experience with Tenex or other procedures to cure achilles tendinopathy?

I have been doing eccentric heal drops for awhile which have definitely improved things but the issue hasnt gone away. Also, I did PT for about a month back in October but dropped it cause I wasn't seeing enough improvement to justify the co-pay.

Brandon S wrote: I have been doing eccentric heal drops for awhile which have definitely improved things but the issue hasnt gone away. 

I had some sort of Achilles tendon related issue, lasted for a year or so. Started doing heel lifts/drops, took good 6 months to get from bad to tolerable. IIRC I was doing 2.5 x bodyweight on each  leg towards the end. Once it got to the tolerable stage, I started running, was still doing heel exercises. I get flare ups now and again, but nothing debilitating. 

amarius wrote:

I had some sort of Achilles tendon related issue, lasted for a year or so. Started doing heel lifts/drops, took good 6 months to get from bad to tolerable. IIRC I was doing 2.5 x bodyweight on each  leg towards the end. Once it got to the tolerable stage, I started running, was still doing heel exercises. I get flare ups now and again, but nothing debilitating. 

Tendon issues take forever to heal.

Thanks Amarius. Good to hear you were able to fix a similar issue with heel raises alone. I think I'll probably end up sticking to that conservative approach before resorting to surgery. Its just tough to keep up with the amount of PT required to heal this thing.

Hey Brandon,  I was in a similar situation a few years ago.  I took a fall while ice climbing and partially tore my Achilles along with a few total tears of some smaller ligaments.  I went to the "top doctor" in Washington to get an assessment, and within a few minutes he had a surgery plan outlined for me- part of which involved completely slicing my calf muscle in half and reattaching it in a more "optimal" orientation.  According to him, after all the surgeries, I would have at least 1 year of recovery time, and only a 98% chance that I would ever fully recover.  I didn't like that news whatsoever, especially considering the whole appointment lasted only a few minutes. I decided to look up who the ultramarathon runners of Seattle were using, and found a specialist.  It took about a month in a boot, a year in PT, and lots of trial and error.  That was about 2.5 years ago.  Only about 8 months ago did I no longer really worry or feel any problems in my Achilles, which sounds like forever, but it is way better than the 2% chance that the surgery would fail.  I'll also note that I did climb the whole time during all of this (except for the first 2 months after the original injury).  I just had to take a lot of extra precautions while doing it.  I also had to change up my lifestyle a bit to accommodate the healing process, but nothing that wasn't for the better.