I sprained my ankle walking down the street carrying too many things and writing a text. I failed to notice a hole in the sidewalk until I was sprawled on my belly looking back at my foot inside a ten inch divot in the pavement. I got up quickly but knew that I wasn’t going to be happy with what just happened.
My joint’s are ridiculously loose in general and my ankles have been turning my whole life. I always spring right back up but the hole had other designs on my ankle. Limping a couple of blocks to teach after I got up, my eyes kept returning to my ankle as it began to swell.
It would have been smart to have my wife pick me up after class but I’m a dummy and walked home. A ten minute walk took twenty as I took the smallest steps possible and tried to walk well. At that point it had been about ninety minutes since I fell and while the ankle had swollen to the point you see in the picture, I hadn’t stopped using it, and the ankle hadn’t stiffened up.
Fast forward a couple of hours and I am watching the World Cup with my leg up. I don’t think anything is broken as I can flex, extend and rotate pretty freely and can bear weight without screaming.
Here is another opportunity to test out my idea that good movement patterns and posture make it easier to heal from injuries. I often say in class that I don’t mind the thought of injury if I am relatively strong and well aligned. Injuries happen if you live an active life. How we heal from injuries is the key.
Though It is normal to think the worst when injuries happen. In the moment things can look bleak but there’s no stopping the march of time and it is more a question of when, not if, I’ll heal. Yet the mind can do to strange places when you are in pain, especially the acute stages of an injury.
In order to heal I’ll do my best to do the least amount of compensating and try to use my foot and ankle correctly if they allow for it. I am not icing based on a number of articles I read a while back contesting the RICE (rest, elevate, compress, ice) protocol. Google searches reveal a number of people on both sides of this argument. I’ll let you know how that goes. I’m also taking plenty of arnica— internal and topical.
Since I am obsessive I am trying to figure out the best angle for my foot (to flex or not to flex) and ankle as I lie here on the couch. Which, to be honest, is not a place I mind being. I am in full on patient mode (not a place I go often) and looking forward to an afternoon of soccer (which I have never spent much time with), my laptop, and what I imagine will be a doting family.
I guess this is now a diary of my day as some hours later my servants, I mean children, are asleep and my wife is at work so I am left attending to myself, and it isn’t pretty. I have in short order given up on the no compensating idea as my ankle has stiffened considerably and I am hobbling around on my heel with my foot turned out.
While I still don’t think I broke anything for the last few hours I have been debating whether or not I should get an x-ray. I don’t think I’m going to but I’ll think otherwise in ten minutes. Wish me luck. I’ll check in again before I post this in the morning.
Morning has broken and the swelling has gone down about 50%. I woke up somewhere around ten times from twisting and turning and tweaking the ankle but for the most part I feel much better. I am hobbling around using the foot well enough. We are heading to Cape Cod next week for an annual vacation and I was planning on renting a stand up paddle board. As of right now I’d say it’s a 50/50 chance that I will be ready for by next Friday.