If you watch basketball you probably saw or heard about DeMarcus Cousins recent injury to his achilles tendon. He was diagnosed after the game with an MRI confirming a complete rupture of his achilles tendon which means he will not be returning to play this season.
Causes of Achilles Injuries
In my practice we see a lot of achilles injuries ranging from minor tendonitis problems to partial and complete tears. The interesting thing about DeMarcus Cousins injury is that it was not an obvious traumatic injury. He was just playing the game like usual, got in a small scuffle and then couldn’t walk on his leg anymore.
It is not unusual for me to see patients who are wondering how they have such a horrible problem with no good story of an injury to tell. It would be great if we could all talk about how we injured our leg or foot after falling from the back of a car racing down the freeway or sprained our ankle while lifting a car off a fallen friend but unfortunately sometimes we are just going about our normal activities and suffer an injury that takes us out of our normal ability to get around.
When to Treat Achilles Tendon Injuries
Many people feel that since there wasn’t a good cause to the pain that they should just ignore it or hope that it goes away with a little home remedy. Don’t let the injury get worse by ignoring it. Most injuries will heal much faster with aggressive treatment. If you are limping even a little bit you need to be seen and evaluated. Despite the fact, that you didn’t fall off the roof, you may still have a serious injury that will do better with appropriate treatment by a podiatrist.
Unfortunately, sometimes as in the case of DeMarcus Cousins it may even require surgery to correct appropriately. Fortunately though, almost all injuries get back to normal function and hopefully if all goes well we’ll see DeMarcus Cousins back on the court next season.
