Anyone have advice for a torn calf muscle?

[Jammer125]

I lightly strained my left calf muscle about 1 week ago on my hour long early morning walk. It got progressively better to where I actually forgot about it, unfortunately.

While working on my FJR yesterday, I forgot about my strain while I was kneeling and primary used my left leg to get up. It turns out this was a big mistake because as today worn on, I realized that my calf was really starting to hurt while I was trimming bushes and it is now bruised like a MFer. I obviously now have a torn muscle and I've been icing it every hour for 25 minutes and staying off of it as much as possible

Anyone here offer commiseration and how you went about recovery and then time frame to healing?

 

[RossKean]

I lightly strained my left calf muscle about 1 week ago on my hour long early morning walk. It got progressively better to where I actually forgot about it, unfortunately.

While working on my FJR yesterday, I forgot about my strain while I was kneeling and primary used my left leg to get up. It turns out this was a big mistake because as today worn on, I realized that my calf was really starting to hurt while I was trimming bushes and it is now bruised like a MFer. I obviously now have a torn muscle and I've been icing it every hour for 25 minutes and staying off of it as much as possible

Anyone here offer commiseration and how you went about recovery and then time frame to healing?

While I wouldn't suggest that a motorcycle forum is the best place to go for medical advice, I would make sure that your issue is, in fact, a torn (or strained) muscle rather than something like a deep vein thrombosis.

 

[Oldjeep]

My only advice is to go see your orthopedist. Should be able to help determine how bad things are and some appropriate care/PT for it.

 

[Jammer125]

Here are some pictures of my bruised leg from the muscle tear. It's looking and feeling better since I tore it on April 30th. I'm now carefully walking around and this time I'm remembering that it's still healing.

I also captured my screwed up leg in the pictures. This diaster happened 50 years ago when I was 15 - I had a run in with a car on my XL250. I had been enjoying some off road time in the Santa Terresa area of California and got hit by a car as I was coming out of a new housing development that was still under construction. I was two blocks from my older brother's house where I was due to help him build his fence.

A young woman in her Chevy Impala hit me just as I came around a water tanker that was parked just shy of the corner - this tanker blocked my view and I didn't see her as I made a left turn directly in front of her. She'd almost come to complete stop as she hit me broadside and my leg was crushed between the her front bumper and the left side of the bike.

I fell slowly with the bike as it tipped over. I looked down at my foot and it was pointing backwards. I surgery that night and spent 3 weeks in the hospital. Unfortunately, I had a non-union after 6 months in a cast and that required a bone graft surgery where the surgeon took bone from my hip and ground it into a paste and pushing it into the broken bone pieces - hence the long monster scar down the front of my leg.

I spent 1.5 years on crutches following the second surgery. Fortunately this time it healed, but my ankle was frozen in place and it took a great deal of PT to get the small range of motion I have today. My leg now as a permanent bow to the left lateral side, but the PT gave me just enough motion to work the gear shifter on the subsequent 13 motorcycles I've owned over the past 50 years, with my last bike being my FJR1300.

 

[Cyclepath]

Hey Jammer125, sorry to hear of your current leg issue.

This triggered a memory for me - and I thought I would suggest that you go get a soft tissue ultrasound scan done to confirm whether or not your calf now has a blot clot at the site of the injury (?). The scary part of this type of injury is that a simple blot clot could actually move in your circulatory network, get lodged in your brain or a lung - and actually kill you...

I was on a 12 day bucket list trip down in your fine state back about this time of year in 2016, and my buddies and I were out riding southwest of Redding on that quiet, wonderful little Platina Road - aka A16. We'd already been riding for about 8 days, and though I'm a pretty average guy at 5'11", my legs were feeling a bit cramped. We paused on a stretch to get off bikes and take some pictures over the distant mountain ridges; it felt great to be just walking around a little bit to stretch my knees and calves out a little.

I stepped from one medium sized rock to another, to get a better vantage point (I STEPPED, didn't jump), and BOOM! my left calf felt like it had been shot by a gun. I was stunned, spun around and wondered what the hell just happened. My lower leg went into spasm, but I tried to "walk it off" and then got back on the bike. We finished our out and back on CA36, then snuck back to Redding via Red Bluff and the I-5. When I got out of body armor at the hotel and looked at my leg, my left calf was now quite swollen and red.

Stupidly, I just ended up riding 1300 miles back home over the next couple days, but eventually did make an appointment with my doctor. As soon as they saw the leg I was still hobbling around on, they booked me in for an ultrasound scan. Our calves are actually a system of multiple muscles and connective tissue - and thankfully, I had only experienced a tear between the membrane separating different muscle lobes. It bled out down the rest of my leg and pooled at the ankle.

No formal PT was prescribed, but they put me on blood thinner pills for the next 6 months.

BTW, my mother-in-law's little brother actually dropped dead one night at home after he had a relatively mild down event on his heavy cruiser. He was fit and healthy as a horse - and never told anyone. After he died we learned what took him, and then correlated it with new damage on the left side of his bike.

So, I offer this advice as someone that initially, was going to just ignore my little injury and tough it out - man up - and get over it as something that would just heal on its own. I no longer have that perspective.

All the best to you in whatever actions you take.

 

[Jammer125]

Thank you for your concern Cyclepath. My leg and calf feel better each day, probably due to using the RICE method of treating this condition. Fortunately I don't believe that I have a blood clot; just just a tear in my muscle.

I have a Doctor appointment set up with my PCP this Friday. I'm hoping she will at least order me some physiotherapy and preferably an ultrasound scan if she deems it necessary.

I'm very familiar with the roads you mention in Northern California. My wife and I toured them extensively during our 5 years of two-up riding my FJR1300.

 

[Cyclepath]

Yes, push her to agree on getting the ultrasound - as good as most doctors are, they do occassionally overlook something like a clot.
You stated you did have a bruise - so we know that something in your leg bled - and then eventually created a clot. If that clot is any real size and breaks away from your leg, things could change drastically.

Good luck!