How do I fix my ankle?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I skateboarded just about every day for about seven years. About three years back, I was skating and a hurt both of my ankles at once. My left one was sprained pretty well, but my right one just sort of got tweaked. I hardly felt any pain in the right one, but it was probably just overshadowed by the pain in the left. After my left ankle healed, I started to try to skate again. I could never skate for more than maybe twenty minutes of without experiencing pain or discomfort in my right ankle. I would always stop for fear of hurting it badly once it started to hurt. I would try to skate every week or so to test out my ankles only to find that the pain was still there. The weeks turned to months and I started to feel uncomfortable on a skateboard – a terrible feeling for someone who has skateboarded every day for seven years. For those twenty minutes or so I could skate, I sucked bad. I was scared to do things I could have done with my eyes closed before the injuries. Every time I skated, a few things were sure to happen: I would be terrible at it, I would get extremely angry, and I would hurt my right ankle. Eventually, I just sort of stopped skateboarding. I became depressed. Looking back on my life, all the best times, all the best stories, all the best friends, every one of my fondest memories, were so because of skateboarding. I remembered always wondering what the hell people who didn’t skateboard did in their spare time, and now I knew – they sat around depressed watching tv and playing computer games. In those three years since I stopped skating, I’ve watched one of my best friends turn ameteur (that is, start getting paid a little for it, in addition to getting free boards, and product from his sponsors), another friend become a professional skateboarding filmer, and both of them tour all over the world for free. One of my friends just turned pro and gets royalties from his pro model skateboards. I was, and still am jealous beyond words. When I watch my friends skate, there’s nothing I’d rather do than skate myself.

Fast forward to maybe four months ago. I was out with my friends, and a bunch of them had skateboards around. I thought I’d try my luck and borrowed one. I skated for twenty minutes with no sign of pain. I still sucked, but I didin’t feel any pain. I skated maybe 20 minutes more – just flat ground tricks and such, and i started feeling a slight discomfort, but not as much as before. I decided that I would start skating again. I figured my ankle must be healed by now, and the pain I was experiencing was probably just due to the fact I wasn’t used to skating anymore. And besides, sitting around on my ass for months didn’t seem help it any. I figured I could start out slowly and easy, and just skate until I felt some discomfort, and slowly, my ankle should build itself up again to where I could skate all day. So I began. I started skating once a week again. It felt like I was learning to skateboard all over again. I was akward, and sucked, but I was getting better. It seemed to be working as planned. After maybe three months of skating 'till the pain came, I skated a full five-hour session one night, a full four hours beyond the pain. I was just having way too much fun to stop. I progressed about 3-4 years in skateboarding in those five hours. I was still way behind my pre-injury self, but I didn’t care. I felt a massive weight lifted from my shoulders. I felt no pressure to be good at all, as I had convinced myself I did have an excuse for sucking. I wasn’t even lusting for that feeling of accomplishment like I had been all those years. I just wanted to have fun. I felt like I was reborn into skateboarding, but this time, into a more pure form where how good you were bore no relation to how much you enjoyed it. I went to sleep that night tired, happy, and with a sore ankle. I woke up with happy with sore legs. No worries – I knew I just needed to get used to it again. My ankles had outlasted my legs! I gave myself a week for recharging. After that week, I started skating every few days. My ankle always eventually started to hurt, pretty bad sometimes, but I was determined to tough it out, convinced it would just take some time to build itself up. I kept skating even after they started to hurt, and my ankle was always fine after one or two days, and meanwhile, I’m feeling great on a skateboard. I figured out a way to sort of keep the strain off my right ankle, as usually the pain comes from the pressure landing on the ground a certain way. Now, instead of landing hard on my feet, I usually just fall to the floor. One such time, I got smashed up pretty bad. My ankle was fine though. I got up and tried that same trick that just wiped the floor with me, only this time, I went twice as fast and grinded twice as long, and I landed it perfectly. I’ve had a taste of heaven, and I’m not giving it up.

Two days later (last night) a friend and I went skating. We had been skating my friend’s rail for maybe an hour or so when I landed just right, so that I felt the worst pain in my ankle I’ve ever felt since the first time I hurt my left one. The instant I felt the pain, It felt like God had just screamed in my face, “WHO THE FUCK DID YOU THINK YOU WERE KIDDING!!!” and I don’t even believe in God. I screamed at the top of my lungs, came to the realization that I would never skate pain-free again as long as I lived, and felt the pain shoot up from my ankle to my chest where it became devastating heartbreak, all before taking a single, hobbled step. I stood up, limped over to my skateboard and rolled over to sit on my friend’s tailgate. I sat there thinking, tears streaming, that there’s no fucking way I’m letting my ankle get the best of me. I don’t give a fuck if my fucking foot falls off. I’m not fucking stopping.

Anyone have any ideas on how to fix my ankle? How would, say, a pro baseball player deal with something like this? Are there exercises, or stretches, or something I can do? It hurts at the top of my foot near the joint. It seems to only hurt when I land on it a certain way, and unfortunately, that certain way is a pretty common way to land when you’re skateboarding. In the three years since the injuries, I’ve run countless miles, climbed mountains, played hide and seek, and even football without so much as a reminder of my ankle’s condition, but every fucking time I set foot on a skateboard, pain.

Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks.

2

First, get thee to a doctor. X-ray it and find out how much tendon/ligament damage you have done. Really, you need to do this.

I have two bad ankles as well, and I ‘cured’ myself in two ways: neoprene ankle supports and ankle-high shoes.

I wore neoprene ankle supports everyday for months. they cost around $15 each and were thin enough to slip into my shoes. This helped support them, keep them warm, etc. Then the most expensive part came: replacing shoes. Just accept the fact that you have weak ankles and you will always need to protect them. Buy ONLY ankle-high shoes for the rest of your life. Sneakers, boots and dress shoes all need that extra bit for support. In reality, once bought, I have never had any problems; but many, many times I know the shoes saved me. They allow normal foot movement, but when your ankle/foot starts to ‘turn-over’ they stop it. And it won’t be restricted to skateboarding. If you hit a step going down with your heel, then your toes are forced down and can catch on the next step. Because you have weak ankles you won’t be able to support or correct the motion and your ankle will ‘turn-over’, thus tweaking it and causing more damage. Just accept it, your ankles suck, protect them. No tennis shoes, no Teva’s, no loafers. Just ankle-high shoes and boots.

There are good exercisies that will help too. Stand on one leg, grab your raised foot, then bend over and touch the floor at 5 points around your foot with your other hand. This will work a range of motion and help your balance. Do it with both feet. Then do calf exercises (toes on the edge of a step and raise yourself). Then do the reverse movement: What you want is a way to exercise the lifting of your foot. Buy bungee cords, attach them to a table leg or ???, sit-down, wrap around your toes/upper foot and pull your toes back against the resistence. If you have a partner, you can have them wrap a towel around your toes/upper foot and provide resistence while you pull.

But see a doctor first.

-Tomcat

3

Hey No Disguise, I’m sorry you’re going through this. Like Tomcat said, get to a doctor first, but other than that, I second everything Tomcat said. I messed up my own ankles doing gymnastics in high school, and when I came to college, I had a lot of ankle problems from walking so much. I had to have physical therapy, and they told me I needed to strengthen my calves so that they could take over some of the work of my ankles.

The exercises they suggested were toe rises, the bungee cord resistance, and standing on your toes on one foot with your eyes closes for a minute. I know it doesn’t sound like anything, but try it - it’s really hard because your leg will start moving around trying to keep its balance, and you’ll really feel it in your calf. When I did it, I had to open my eyes after about twenty seconds because I couldn’t keep my balance, and it’s still a good exercise even with your eyes open. You can do repetitions of all these - it should help some. Good luck.

4

When you sprained your ankle so bad, was it a radial sprain (ankle rotates painfully in a clockwise or counterclockwise twist) or a lateral sprain (foot rolls sideways and under the ankle)? Lateral sprains can turn the cables of your anke tendons into uselessly loose and attenuated string, and as a consequence a couple dozen ankle bones can slide around in and out of proper and improper positions, and when they’re in the improper positions, buddy you walking nowhere, nor even putting your weight down on that foot.

What others said about seeing a doc. Find a good orthopedist. You may need ankle repair. I did. (I wasn’t skateboarding, just dashing through the rain and tried to do a 90° turn on a wet cobblestone and rolled the ankle sideways. The sprain kept me off my foot for a fully five days after which I tottered to class with a cane and a cautious willingness to put foot down (toes only, pointed, no flexing) long enough to get the working foot up front. Another four days before I was really walking, but a few years later never thought of it again…until one day I was walking up to the front of the LIRR train and had to hobble back using the backs of the seats like crutches.

Orthopedist said my tendons were like stretched-out chewing gum. Snipped them loose at one end, folded them over, reattached them tighter and wider and thicker and post-recovery I can run full-out and pivot on ankles changing direction dodging people and objects.

5

Yeah, I’ve thought about going to a doctor, but I never did because I always had that “it’ll fix itself” in the back of my head. I guess I really should go now.

I’ve also toyed with the idea of wearing a brace, but concluded they wouldn’t be any help in this situation. I hurt my ankle during seemingly normal movment. It’s hard to explain. I just know that I can land a trick on a skateboard perfectly and it’ll hurt; no tweaking, twisting, or anything. Since braces serve to restrict twisting and such, it seems like they wouldn’t help. I also didn’t want to develop a dependence on them like a friend of mine had, but I guess that would be better than the alternative at this point. That was my reasoning anyway, I suppose it’s worth a try.

I don’t think I have inherently week ankles. On the contrary, my friends back then, averaged about one ankle injury per year while I had only had two seperate incidents in seven.

That bungee cord exercise sounds like something that could help. But yes, I’ll get to a doctor. Thinking about it now, I don’t know why I didn’t.

AHunter3:
The left ankle is the one I sprained badly, and that one healed 100% after a few weeks. The right ankle, which didn’t get forced to move in any perceptibly weird way is the one that’s been giving me problems.