Okay. It’s a broken ankle, but it’s a “clean” break and will require no surgery/pins.
The way it happened was this:
I was helping D with the washing and was carrying a clothes basket down the stairs (bedrooms are upstairs).
This is an older house and each step of the stairs is only about a foot wide.
The basket was fuller with clothes than normal and It was hard for me to gauge where to put my feet, so about half way down, down I went.
Didn’t know it at the time but yeah, I broke the ankle and hit my head on the wall.
The reason we didn’t know it at the time, is because the new B/P meds I am on are making my hands and legs swell, so, because I could walk up the stairs last night we just thought “twisted ankle”.
Wrong.
So I’m in a temporary cast till next week and when the swelling recedes, they’ll put me on one oc those “walking” casts and I shold be able to get around a bit better.
My computer time is going to be minimal because I have to keep my left leg elevated for now, and I’m being petted rotten by my wife, and I’m “eatin’ it up!” LOL
So consider me as being officially on the (physical) disabled list. (We already knew about the mental list, right?;))
Ouch–I’m glad it was “only” a broken ankle. (A few years back, my aunt had a spiral fracture in her lower leg from a fall on her basement stairs–surgery and metal and lots of recovery time.) Best wishes for a quick recovery! And enjoy the pampering.
I’d check with the doctor on that one. I don’t know about breaks, but for sprains you generally only want to ice for the first 48 hours or so–after that, apply heat.
When I broke both of my feet last year, I was told to apply a bag of frozen peas for several days. That would take the swelling down.
I didn’t have any frozen peas (and I wasn’t about to skip down to the local store), so I used frozen broccoli and water chestnuts in a butter and garlic sauce. I guess that’s what they call alternative medicine.
I think the reason you put heat on a sprain is to loosen the muscle up. With a break, that’s probably not necessary. You just want to bring the tissue swelling down. IANAD, though, so take that with a grain of frozen salt.
How long to keep the frozen veggies on? I don’t know. After two days, I was pretty sick of the whole thing.
The explanation I always heard was that you ice to reduce initial swelling (which could lead to further tissue damage), and then a few days in, after the initial immune response has calmed down, you apply heat to increase circulation, which speeds healing.
Ice wouldn’t get through this cast material anyway, so it’s a moot point.
I did, however, take Mama Zappa’s advice and asked for some orange sherbet (my favorite ice cream), some Batman comics, the latest Dean Koontz, and some new jammies.
When I get sick, I play that shit for all it’s worth!
On another note: A friend brought me a cane (our upstairs bedrooms and bathrooms are kinda narrow for crutches or a walker), and man! I thought I knew how to use this thing, having watched House as much as I have, but there’s a fine art to it, isn’t there? I mean you really have to hold it close and make it “be” that affected limb.
Also, I make quite a comical sight, scooting up and down the stairs on my butt!
Thanks for all the advice.
I figure I can squeeze one more week of sympathy out of this thing before I’ll have to start doing stuff again!
ACK! No, no, no, no, no! Do **not **use *House *as a guide for how to use a cane. You want the cane on the **opposite **side from your injury–you want to be kind of making a triangle with your injured leg on one side, the cane on the other, and the good leg in the middle.
Side note: the latest season’s DVD set is supposed to be shipping on Monday! Woohoo! I can finally get caught up.
It’s an easy mistake to make–putting the cane on the opposite side seems kind of counterintuitive at first. I mean, the other leg isn’t injured, so why would you have it over there?
