Just got back from the most racist shopping experience of all time in Villeneuve at the Centre Commercial Riviera. Racist dude cut in front of me and a swiss chick in line, then he let the swiss chick go after we both complained but then cut in front of me. Efftard. Then we get to the parking lot and these dudes behind us honked after we had been in the car like five seconds to take our place. Nice Husband said nicely at first, “look we weren’t in there that long” and the guy was an ass to him and was like, “Yeah well I am in a hurry” instead of doing the civil adult thing of saying, you know, “sorry for honking.” Nice Husband should come with a warning sticker not to make him mad. All I am going to say is that the conversation ended with the honker being called to his face a racist and a xenophone and a UDC voter. Those buttheads would have apologized if I didn’t have a headscarf on, I know it. Anyway, on to serious topics. Sprained ankles. If any of you ever sprain your ankle do not try to walk it off. So Cairogal this is for you.
When I first sprained my ankle in February, I asked my father, as I inherited his insanely small feet (who in turn inherited them from his mother, I look at my feet and I swear I see my grandma’s feet, it is kinda freaky at times) for his professional opinion, having had two major sprains and a broken foot. We also both have weird high arches but anyway I digress.
First, Ladies, Picture it. Sicily, 1918 Gulfport, 1981. My father has a steamroller run over his foot at work. Diagnosis? A couple of broken bones in his ankle and foot. Healing time? About ten weeks. How long did his foot take to feel 100%? He said about five to six months, and he was walking at 80% once they took the cast off.
My father. Standing on a boat ladder in Gulfport, circa 1987. Falls off the ladder and sprains his ankle, rolled it over completely. The helicopter came to airlift him out and as my father was about to pass out from the pain, the paramedic lady says to him as she is cutting off his work boot, “You better hope to God that you broke this” and my dad was like, “Whaa?” Paramedic lady says, “If you sprained it, you are effed, if you broke it, you’ll be ok.” He sprained that sucker. Tore a couple ligaments, the whole deal. He didn’t have a cast, but was bandaged up for a good three months. He wasn’t walking right, by his and my memory, for six months, and wasn’t 100% for a year or a year and a half. He said that sprain hurt way more than the break ever did.
Geneva, February 2008. DP, acting the fool, trips in front of the train station for no good reason and her foot immediately swells to the size of a softball. She completely rolled it and fell flat on the ground. Having had major ballet sprains before (and a minor sprain doing the same thing one year prior), she thinks she can walk it off and proceeds to not only go to work the following day, but also go to a conference in the mountains the following week against medical advice and work when she should have been home with her foot up. Stupid me thought I would get points at work for working through the pain, when in reality all they thought was that if I was coming in, it couldn’t be that bad. First set of doctors and PTs she sees think that it is just a fat girl sprain (likely what my former bosses thought, buttmunches) and if I didn’t get it skiing then it couldn’t be that bad. In all honestly, I can’t blame my former boss 100%. He was only about 50% *sshole and 50% personal experience. His family are all semi-pro or pro skiers so he honestly can only be blamed half for thinking I had a fat girl sprain, as most of the leg injuries he was familiar with involved the REGA and emergency surgery.
Geneva, May 2008. DP is perplexed as to why she still can’t walk unassisted and her PT tells her that she should have stayed home for a couple of weeks in February and not gone to work since her *sshole bosses don’t appreciate her anyway, so no wonder her ankle is still messed up. So she decides to get an MRI. After the MRI, the doctor comes out to tell her personally that her ankle is “completely screwed.” (The French expression was “complètement petée”) diagnosis: SHE WALKED ON IT TOO MUCH.
Lausanne, June 1st. DP was able to stop walking with a cane for short distances. Still need a cane for the mall, the grocery store etc.
Lausanne, Mid June 2008. One of the most promininet sports medicine doctors in Switzerland looks at MRI, looks at softball size ankle, and pronounces the profound diagnosis of, “I don’t know what the hell is going on with your foot and why it is taking so long, I think it is because you walk on it to much.” Got two months more PT and might have surgery.
Moral of this very long and rambling story, Cairogal: Don’t walk if you absolutely do not have to and go to PT as frequently as possible. Even if your foot feels good, just chill. Get an MRI if you haven’t already just to make sure they didn’t miss anything in the x ray (like they did with me). If you overstretched or tore a ligament (or three or four like I did), just settle in for about six months, swim, bike, but don’t walk. When you are at home just keep it propped up. I used to be very active on the weekends and now I do laundry, I go out one day for groceries for a few hours and that is IT. If I’m not feeling it, even for short distances, I bring a cane. Your PT will say that you need to walk on it to get your muscles back. This is only partly true. When I do that, I find I favor my other leg too much, and I wind up hurting in my opposite knee. The cane balances my weight out and keeps my opposite leg from hurting by being favored too much. The only thing I don’t do now is wrap it and take pain meds (unless I am doing major walking, like if I have guests) because I want to know exactly how swollen and painful it is so that I can report back to my doctor. That is why I am a fan of the cane. If you don’t want to feel like a grandma, get a nordic walking pole (that is what I did), it helps just that much to make you walk evenly.
Also, I know from your blog that you are active and outdoorsy. I am too, and not being able to do stuff for six months just about made me depressed. I was pissed off at the doctors and pissed off at the PTs (for not being magic voodoo healers) and pissed off at my ankle (for not healing fast enough) and pissed off at my bosses (for, well, being themselves) and pissed off at my husband (because I couldn’t make him understand that I look normal but I just can’t do anything). In fact, if it involves standing or pivoting I just can’t do it. I used to work retail and could stand for ten or twelve hours. This is hard for me. I spent a good three months being mad at people because I couldn’t do anything. Please don’t be like me for that. If I could go back to March and tell myself something, it would be to chill and focus on healing and not be mad at stuff I can’t change. I would have gotten my “sport” cane earlier. I just wish someone would have told me (I didn’t talk to my dad about it until May) in February not to expect anything for six months. I still can’t do downstairs, but these past few weeks are the first time in ever that my foot almost looks a normal size and feels good enough to do normal daily activities.
What people don’t understand is that there are sprains and then there are sprains. That was the hardest for me- people looking at me like I was crazy because I “only had a sprain” and didn’t break something. A lot of times broken ankles heal faster than sprained ankles- that is what happened to my dad. I have walked off a lot of sprains- I mean, I took ballet as a child, I must have sprained my ankle four five times a year. If you can’t walk it off in three days, then something else is going on and there are ligaments involved.
Don’t walk. Just don’t. Do however much sitting around you need to heal. And keep your foot elevated as much as possible. I totally feel your pain.
maybe even number 2.
