Two-and-a-half weeks after having surgery on his Achilles tendon, Toronto’s mayor is back in the office - and scooting around city hall.
“It’s been my salvation,” John Tory said of his knee scooter. “I’ve mastered doing seven-point turns.”
The mayor had injured the tendon several times over the years and was told in the spring that he would need an operation to repair it. On July 24, a surgeon at Humber River Hospital made a 38-cm incision in his leg to restructure the Achilles while Tory was under general anesthetic.
“They just say ‘we're going to give you this cocktail and you’re going to sleep’ - and I say, ‘how soon?’ And they say ‘right now,’” Tory said.
Tory had his plaster cast removed Monday morning and replaced with a special boot. He won’t be able to put any weight on his right leg for several more weeks and says using the scooter has given him a newfound appreciation for accessibility needs in the city.
“Even going into a place with one stair, I have to sort of think about it, I have to balance myself in a certain way,” he told CTV News Toronto on Monday.
But the busy mayor says he’s relieved to at least be back in the office; he felt he was missing out on the action of city hall and community events over the past few weeks.
“If we didn’t have a telephone and didn’t have email I would have found it to be beyond any kind of torture that I could imagine,” Tory said. “I very much like to be plugged in.”
