Last Thursday I went to a doc because my ankle was hurting something awful, and after checking it out he told me that it was indeed sprained. I hadn’t done anything in particular that made it hurt, but the likely source was from doing too much walking in flip flops (no support). So for the past week I’ve been wearing an elastic ankle brace, icing it here and there, and wearing sneakers.
I called the doctor because I was concerned that although it’s feeling better, the swelling hasn’t gone down. He said that the swelling could last up to another 2 weeks, and I should wear the brace for another week. again.
So tell me, folks, of your experiences with sprained ankles. How you injured yourself, how long until it felt better, and, especially, how long it took for the swelling to go down.
Walking home from work once I was walking up a rural path. I noticed something up a rugged little hill and walked up. Then on the way down I decided to jump. I couldn’t see the solid surface I was jumping into, just the foliage above it. I landed on the side of my foot. It f^%$!g hurt!
Nine broken ankles. That is to say, nine breaks on two ankles.
Innumerable sprains.
The last time I sprained my ankle really badly, there was bruising from my pinkie toe up to mid-shin (looked like I was wearing a purple sock). I was walking on it normally 3 days later, mainly because the nerves, tendons and ligaments in there are shot.
I’ll be requiring the surgery later in life.
So do what your doctor says and stay off it as much as possible. Give it a chance to really heal up properly. Hope it feels better soon.
I sprained my ankle lightly a couple of weeks back running. I got to the end of my normal workout, discovered for the first time[sup]*[/sup] I wasn’t even remotely winded and decided I could just keep running. Doh.
It’s just starting to return to normal. This friday I should be recovered enough to do a light run or at the very least a longish walk. crosses fingers That’ll teach me to push myself too hard.
I just started running the month before that, so it wasn’t a very long distance.
Got tangled up in a soccer goal net in college…long story, but a rare instance when alcohol was NOT involved. I was hopping around trying to get untangled when I rolled the ankle. Felt a nasty wet cruch along the top & outside anklebone. The sole of my foot turned black & blue, the ankle swelled of course and it was sore & uncomfortable for maybe 3-4 weeks. I never needed crutches though, just favored the good foot for a while.
It’s never ben the same. I used to run a lot and every now and then I’d step off a curb wrong and roll it and get the same crunchy feeling. Down I’d go, invoke the name of the diety at hand and demand a curse be placed upon the joint. Then I’d get up and finish up the run–sometimes over a mile or more. It would still swell some, but it was always manageable.
Now I’ll roll it over and get no crunch, minimal swelling, and tenderness for a couple days.
I go through the same thing with my knee on the same leg–painful initial injury, routinely slip out of the joint for no reason at all and just get on with life with a limp for a day or two.
I reckon there must be a benevolent god behind all this because I think another 40-50 years more of this is about all I’ll be able to stand.
This happened to me. 2 weeks ago I was walking in my flip flops(they used to be called thongs) and twisted it slightly.
It didn’t hurt but a few days later it sure did and I was limping.
I went to the dr. and he said it was bad, ordered x rays and gave me a gel cast which is removable.
I only wear it when I go out but after 2 days in it, the pain was goe and now I am No longer limping.
I have til Monday to keep it off, but he said the swelling is the last symptom to go.
I doubt its flip flops; people have walked barefoot a lot and never sprained.
As a kid in Illinois, neighbors had a big pile of bricks in their backyard.
First big snow, it was an instant hill!
Climbed up and jumped into the big white puffy snowbank - that I stupidly didn’t realized had more bricks underneath.
Sprained my ankle real bad, limped home, father said, “walk it off” and after two steps I almost collapsed from pain.
I remember it hurting almost until the last snows melted, and in Illinois that is a really long time.
Like Dante, I have suffered the joys of many an ankle sprain. It’s to the point where the bones of my left ankle have calcified and I am unable to supinate (roll onto the side) my foot. Makes it difficult and painful sometimes to run. My right ankle has a full range of motion. I used to have to tape my ankles so often that I no longer have hair growing on my legs from mid-shin down.
I broke my ankle once, jumping off the bottom step of a bleacher (maybe 3" off the ground). That didn’t hurt nearly as much as a sprain. In fact, I played softball on it, went 3-4 with a couple of doubles, and limped around on it for two days before going for x-rays. I even walked to the hospital. No brain, no pain, as mom was fond of saying.
Ooh… I sprained an ankle when I was three or four.
I was alone at home, playing with audio cassette cases, stacking them in a rectangular fort shape. When I heard my parents’ footsteps from outside our apartment, I quickly ran to find a place to hide (I liked making them look for me for some reason) and accidentally stepped on the cases at I tried to leap across them. This sprained my ankle.
That wasn’t particularly interesting. What was funny was what happened when I got an x-ray… When I was a kid I smiled for pictures, no matter what. So there I was lying down on my stomach, bawling because I thought I was going to get a shot. They couldn’t get me to stop moving on the x-ray table, so my mom had an idea: She told me that they were going to take a picture. Immediately after they said “Smile!” my crying ceased and I managed to point a tear-strained smile at a random direction. After they got enough x-rays, I went back to crying until they told me I was done.
I remember believing that the pain had already started to go away after the x-ray, and I was hopping around on my bad ankle in excitement. Weird kid I was.
Football. During a practice I jumped to catch a pass and when I landed, my right foot went into a gopher hole. Pretty much ruined my season. Hard cast and no practice for 3 weeks, soft cast for 5 more weeks and it had to be taped and wrapped for every practice and game. It’s still weak and sprains easily.
I’d sprain my ankles (pick one, either one) so often that I just sort of lost track. This was playing football, both sorts, but mainly world football (soccer). Sometimes in volleyball, too. But the big, bad sprain came playing basketball. It was my senior year in high school, and we were playing basketball on eight foot baskets at an elementary school near our house. Some kid went to shoot and I jammed the ball back in his face. Sadly I also landed on his foot which he’d stuck out in front of himself. My ankle turned and I heard little popping noises. After a short time my ankle was so swollen that I could not wear my shoes. In the course of time my whole leg was swollen from toes up to my knee, with lovely black, blue, purple and green shadings. It was hard to tell that I even had toes.
Now as luck would have it, this was the one time in the whole history of our family that we’d ever had an HMO. So after an excruciatingly painful and jarring ride home in a friend’s (who was just only learning to work a stick/clutch), my mother drove me up to the hospital. They took an x-ray (which really doesn’t show much as far as tendons and such) and then gave me a pair of crutches and an ace bandage. Apparently crutches and ace bandages cure about everything if you’re at an HMO. They also gave me a prescription for Tylenol III with codeine. The presciption was just strong enough to make the pain bearable. I’d wake up in the morning with tears in my eyes since the Tylenol had worn off while I slept. I think the prescription ran for 2-3 weeks. I was able to walk properly again, without a limp, after six months. I was able to run and participate in sports again about one year after that. Of course this was with absolutely no follow up or rehabilitation, so hopefully your mileage will vary.
I’ve had three sprains to my right ankle, but the only bad one was the second one. I was 16 years old and in dance class, practicing our kickline when I jumped up and accidentally landed on the front top part of my foot (I have no idea how I managed to do this).
It started swelling right away and got pretty big within a day, and I probably should have gone to a doctor right away. Instead I hobbled around my house, hopping and crawling when it got too painful. It was two weeks before my dance recital, and I was afraid that if I went to a doctor, I would hear there was no way I could dance, so I tried to ignore the sprain.
After five days, I finally went to a doctor for treatment, and I got an aircast and a most exciting video - Caring For Your Sprained Ankle. I remember that as the swelling went down, the bottom of my foot turned bluish purple like a bruise, and the doctor told me that the fluid draining from the swelling was responsible for that.
Five years later, my ankle is really loose and it pops every time I roll my foot around (several times in fact), but otherwise it’s fine. And I was able to dance in the recital (while wearing a big ole’ aircast under my tights!)
I’ve sprained my left ankle once, and my right ankle once. For the left ankle, it got caught under something while the foot was at an awkard angle. Crunch. For the right ankle, I was going down some stairs and somehow misjudged the distance between the last step and the floor… landed oddly on my right foot, with all of my weight on it. Ow.
They were a bit swollen for awhile… a week tops though. And I just iced 'em down when I wasn’t walking around. No brace, no Ace bandage, etc. I just didn’t walk if I didn’t have to and when I did walk I took it slow and easy.
Both of them were better in about a week, week and a half. (Not much longer than it took for the swelling to compltely dissapear anyway.)
<< Come on, people–I can only do six things at once, and one of them HAS to be breathing! >>
I sprained both of my ankles in gymastics related accidents.
The first time, I was working on the tumble trampoline after coaching. I got nice and high, and came down with my right food pointed inward. There was an incredibly loud snap, and I fell down and started bawling. I was ordered off of it for 6 weeks, and I think it was swollen and purple for at least 4 weeks of that. I was able to coach and dance again on it afterwards with a lace-up canvas brace on. That ankle healed very well, and causes no trouble now.
My left ankle was initially and less severe sprain, but never healed correctly. I was practicing leaps on the floor, and did the same thing, landing with my left foot turned in. Unfortunately, my boss (the gym owner) was a twit, and insisted not only that I walk on it immediately, but that I stay and teach that night. So I was never really off that ankle, and it shows! I have scar tissue that makes the left one still look kind of swollen.
So I’m guessing that eventually some part of my foot is going to turn all sorts of purply shades? Super great. If it comes to that, I’m sure I’ll be showing all my friends.
I still really wish I had any idea how I did this. I miss sandals.
I’m scared to go back to work - in retail - tomorrow. It was my luck that I was scheduled for last Friday (got someone to cover) and then not again until tomorrow, so I’ve been able to keep off my feet as much as possible. I’m going to ask that I go up and down stairs as little as possible I suppose, as that’s part of the job (going into the stock room). Friday I’m scheduled for a long day, and I’d hate to exacerbate this injury. Harumph.
Okay keep telling stories, this is fun!
I photograph ruins and I am extremely careful. Nonetheless, one day I wasn’t as careful as I suaully am, and my foot crunched through the floor of a little, stone farmhouse. I only dropped about 8 to 10 inches. Landed on the edge of my foot, rolling over on my ankle.
“Yeeowch! That smarts!” I thought. Hiked back home.
During the week I found that I was still getting nasty twinges of pain. There was almost no swelling though, so I figured I’d just turned it really badly. Come the 6th day after my accident, I woke up with white hot shooting pain that hurt so bad I thought I’d puke.
“Okay, this is worse than I thought.”
The doctor was positive it was fractured… But the x-rays proved him wrong.
“Good news, Crayons”, he said, “it’s not broken. The bad news is that it s Very Bad Sprain and will hurt more.”
I was on crutches for six weeks, a cane for a few after that. It took seven months before I stopped limping noticeably. Apparently, there was some nerve damage, so even now, my foot isn’t 100% sure of where it is in space, so on uneven surfaces, like cobblestones, I tend to get wobbly and turn it again (owie, owie, F**king ow!)
My gait is still a little strange because I would walk a little funny in order to avoid feeling teinges of pain. I’m correcting that now.
I’ve had several sprained ankles, because as a young teen I was a big klutz (ok, still am).
My worst was when I was going into 8th grade (it was August). I was jumping tires at a church picnic and fell.
So we go to the ER, take pretty pictures of it, etc. It was all purple and swollen and stuff. The cast guy comes in and says “you should have just broken it, it would have healed faster.”
So I wear a cast for oh, a couple of months. When they took it off my foot looked much like what a corpse’s foot probably looks like: white, dull, dead skin all about.
Then I wore this ankle brace thingy that looks like a little foot corset.
I think January was when I was released from the orthopedist.
Mine was similar to bughunter’s…I was carrying an armful of Christmas stuff down from the attic. The steps are narrow and it’s dark at the bottom. I just plain missed the last step. I felt and heard this sickening spoing! as my foot wrenched to one side. I bounced off the door frame, then crashed into the railing along the staircase leading downstairs. (Which was the good news; pitching headlong down to the next floor would have been a real bitch.)
It hurt like absolute blazing hell. I finally hopped one-footed to the bedroom, leaning on the walls along the way and waited for my (then) husband to get home. When I told him what happend, he promptly rushed out to the landing to make sure the railing wasn’t damaged. Prick.
Went the doc next morning; no break but had to wear a wrap support for a few weeks and use crutches, ice compresses, etc. My ankle swelled easily twice its normal size and the whole foot turned black, blue, a rather nauseating mauve and streaks of yellowy-green. Since I’m a klutz at the best of times (no, really?!) it was great fun navigating crutches, not to mention wearing a houseslipper because it was the only thing that fit over all the swelling.
That was about 7 years ago but that ankle clicks sometimes when I climb stairs. I think it remembers.
I’ve had the distinct (and asinine) pleasure of spraining both of my ankles within a week of each other. I was playing basketball and landed on my brother’s foot rolling one ankle. This wasn’t the first time so I limped off the court (which at the time happened to be my neighbor’s driveway). Not a week later, I"m out fucking around with him, just playing HORSE when I step of the side of the driveway and roll the other one! WTF! Now I have two fucked up ankles that I have to crawl home with, and my twin brother laughing all the way back to the house. Dick.
