Leon

For about two years I’ve had a very painful and swollen ankle. It was originally misdiagnosed as tendinitis and it was actually a different type of problem, but over that period I’d experienced a really a bad swollen ankle, so bad I couldn’t walk on it.  It would swell to about three or four times the size of what it should be, even doing the shopping in Sainsbury’s became a struggle.  I had to give up doing sports and it would wake up in the morning and within half an hour I’d have a very swollen and painful ankle.

I underwent about two years worth of physiotherapy, x-rays, different tests I ended up taking very powerful painkillers and generally it was a very negative and depressing limiting experience.  It meant that I couldn’t do normal exercise, I used to play all kind of sports and games, I put on weight and generally it was a very negative experience for me.

I went to my GP and they referred me to physio and we got to the stage where they decided I would essentially have to live with the pain.  A friend of mine that I work with had come across The Regenerative Clinic and gave me a link so I looked it up and booked an appointment because at that stage I was at the end of my tether.

I remember sitting in a supermarket watching people walk around thinking how lucky they were to walk pain-free, that’s how bad it got. I read about Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP) and Lipogems and I thought I’d give it a try.

I had my treatment at The Regenerative Clinic, my consultant was Mr Nima Heidari.  It was very customer focused he took on my needs and aspirations really clearly.  He accurately diagnosed a problem using some tests and scans of my ankle and managed to tell me exactly what was wrong.  He explained that I had been misdiagnosed in the past and the course of treatment he recommended Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP) was very effective and reduced the problem.

Over the period of a year I’ve now returned to doing most of the things I did before the ankle was damaged.  Over that last year I’ve hardly had any painkillers, I’ve returned to playing table tennis and I can wear normal shoes.  I do 10 mile walks, occasionally the ankle will swell but it’s nothing at all like before, it’s reduced everything.  So, in many ways it exceeded what I expected and it also made me mentally feel a lot stronger and gave me a lot of confidence back in myself because when you’re in chronic pain over a period of two years it begins to eat away at you.

I’ve become a great preacher about PRP I’ve told lots of people about it and recommended they look at it as an option.  As you can see I can even rotate my ankle, I couldn’t have done that before so it was tiny little things I couldn’t do and now I’ve probably returned to about 80 to 90 percent of what I was before the ankle had started to swell and get painful. I’d certainly use it again if I had a different type of injury and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to other people.

Added February 2020