I haven’t, but my daughter sprained her ankle this spring. Now this girl plays three varsity sports, and how did she hurt herself? Falling off a curb. As in, just walking.
Anyway, she said she rolled it, and we didn’t realize how bad it might be. Or maybe it wasn’t that bad when she did it, but then she aggravated it. And how!! The next two weekends she had volleyball tournaments, big ones, so she ended up playing 17 matches three and then two day stints, with five days in between. After that she couldn’t play at all. I think if she had been willing to admit how bad it was, it wouldn’t have gotten as bad as it did, if that makes any sense.
She ended up doing nine sessions of physical therapy and missing several weeks of volleyball and softball. Drove her crazy not to play.
But if you’re looking for descriptions to compare notes, she never did have much swelling, and only a very little bruising, and the bruising came later. To look at the ankle you would never have known there was anything wrong.
Sprained my left ankle three times, broke it once: it’s the ankle my motorcycle lands on when I go down (100K miles, four falls – not so bad). The sprains weren’t bad ones, so the break was the biggest PITA. I spent over a month in a cast (and got fraudulently billed by the doctors, but I didn’t pay them, so we’re even), and another two months lurching around like Igor (in my motorcycle boots, no less – I sounded like a drunken clydesdale).
No, the really nasty sprains have been my wrists. Both have been sprained so often I can’t remember how many times it’s been, and they seem to get weaker every time it happens. At one point, I had to lift everything over ten pounds with my thumbs, as lifting with my fingers hurt my wrists. I’ve had wrist sprains that didn’t stop hurting for three months. And my wrists click, pop and snap like breakfast cereal on crack.
As I type, I’m wearing a black canvas ankle brace. It laces up the front and velcros in four places. It looks like my ankle has gone crazy and been put in a straightjacket.
I have a history of spraining my knees and ankles, and I don’t think the joints are as strong as they should be now.
I rolled the ankle playing basketball around three months ago. It swelled slightly, but it hurt like a big dog. I had an Ace ankle brace that I wore for a while, but it didn’t seem to help a whole lot. Well, that’s not true – it helped to stabilize the joint, but the pain didn’t go away. Finally, my wife convinced/shamed/guilted me into going to the doctor around three weeks ago, and he said nothing was broken, but that I probably had some ligament damage. If this ankle brace doesn’t work, I’ll probably wind up having surgery. Yay.
19 sprains, with the right ankle winning 10-9. The worst was getting both in one game. I sprain the right one, limp off to get re-wrapped, come back in and immediately nail the left one. The next morning was really not the most pleasant walking experience I have ever had.
I just sprained my ankle last week. I was cutting through the landscaping at a friend’s apartment complex in the dark and misjudged the step to the pavement. It didn’t seem bad at first and I was able to walk home. In the middle of the night, I got up to pee and had flames shooting through that leg. I barely made it to the bathroom and had to stop a couple of times to keep from passing out. So, to the ER I went. No swelling, no bruising, just pain. By the next day I could walk on it with a limp. I’ve kept it wrapped for support and because it feels better. It’s been a week and it still hurts a bit and feels unstable. I don’t limp but I’ve shortened my stride to accomodate it.
Ironically, the xrays showed that I had broken that foot sometime in the past. I never knew or even thought I might have broken my foot. I guess sprains really are more painful than breaks.
I’ve sprained my left ankle a couple of times. The last was about ten years ago.
The store I worked at was relocating. Everything had been removed from the old location, and I was taking down a security mirror that was anchored up in one corner. The mount point was fairly high, and the ladder I was on was not very tall. Worse, the ladder was one of those flimsy aluminum numbers that you can never get to sit properly.
As I was removing the mirror I had to shift myself to get to one of the screws. The ladder didn’t like this, and went out from under me. As a couple coworkers watched, I fell about 5-6 feet with my left leg tangled up in the ladder. As I laid on the ground getting my bearings and contemplating what just happened, I could feel my left ankle start hurting a bit. I didn’t think much of it. I got up, reset the ladder, and proceeded to remove the mirror, which fortunately had stayed up on the wall through this.
As the night went on my ankle hurt more and more, until a few hours later I could not walk on it at all. Went to the doctor the next day to get it checked. No breaks or anything, just a really bad sprain. He handed me a set of crutches and sent me on my way
I was supposed to stay off the ankle for at least a week, I believe it was. However, this was nearly impossible as I was working in a brand-new store that still needed to be stocked and readied for its grand opening. So, I was up and on the ankle for at least 8-10 hours each day immediately after the incident.
Well, that was dumb. To this day my left ankle aches almost constantly. If I’m active on it at all it can really hurt for a while afterwards. I have trouble finding shoes that don’t bother it. I’ve had it checked out by a few doctors and podiatrists and none can find the problem or any remedy.
The moral: If you screw up your ankle, stay the hell off of it.
And as I type, my right ankle is encased in a soft cast.
A month ago I tripped over my feet coming out of a motor home. The ever-so-handsome paramedic wrapped it, gave me the standard RICE lecture, and off I hobbled. At my nephews wedding A little over a week ago I realized (during the Electric Slide) that it was not healed. Did the RICE thing again. No go.
To top that off, I suddenly had a numbish left foot/ankle/calf. Not completely dead numb, but that state just before pins and needles that causes a dull ache. That began last Sunday.
Being a total Grace, I blew it off. I can tough through it.
After 4 days of looking like I had a full diaper whilst walking, I was ordered to the doctor by my daughter and my father.
So I have the soft cast for another week. The left ankle is possible nerve bruising (unknown source). Pain in left leg is almost gone, we need to wait a few weeks to see. Right ankle is bruised behind the inner anklebone, lovely reddish/purple bruising. If I still have problems in a week, I have to go back for more testing (tendon damage? nerve damage?)
The nick Grace has been hard earned, and I wear it with aplomb. I have sprained both ankles at least 10 times each. Wrists? Yupper. Remember the big wood clogs, so fasionable in the 70’s? Picture those. On ice. Attached to an uncoordinated child. I suppose the fact that my parents allowed me out in the could be construed as child abuse. Add to that gymnastic lessons. On an uncoordinated child. I can remember at least two wrist sprains caused by handsprings. More than once have I been adorned in the finest Ace Bandage acoutrements on both wrist and ankle- at the same time.
hobbles upstairs to check on LilMiss who, for some UNKNOWN reason, decided to wear roller-tennis shoes to the indoor paintball field last night. Roller-tennis shoes and sawdust do not work together. She is wearing my newest Ace Bandage on her wrist, with a 3pm dr appt. Sigh.
Lifetime playground basketball player here. I’ve had too many sprains to remember, but 3 particularly bad ones. I’ll recount the last one, the one that finally made me vow to forever wear a serious ankle brace.
You know how your perceptions slow down during a car accident? Same thing here. My stomach wasn’t feeling so hot, so I was staying back on defense on a trip down the court. But our fast break fizzled and I sprinted to join the play. As I came down the lane, an rebound bounced with perfect timing in my direction. I took off and soared high to get the ball - this was when I was in my 20s and still getting 3+ feet of vertical. I was waiting to come down and was already planning to go back up with the left-handed layup.
Until I landed. There was a moment when I could feel that I had landed on a foot and my foot was perpendicular to the floor but the pain hadn’t yet reached my brain. Then BOOM - the pain exploded and I sort of blacked out. Next thing I knew I was on the floor, writhing and gasping in pain.
It felt like my leg had been amputated at the knee. I couldn’t feel anything down there. A teammate came up and whispered “oh shit,” which set off my alarms. I’d heard stories about athletes breaking their ankles so bad that their feet faced backwards. I hoped my ankle was still attached. I managed to open my eyes for a second just to make sure there were no protruding bones and then I went back to my groaning and gasping.
I was never much for bruising. But even after serious, frostbite-inducing ice applications, the thing still swole up pretty badly. I was walking limp-free within 2 weeks, playing ball in a month, but the ankle will never be the same.
RICE is “standard” care for a sprain/strain/whatever.
Rest
Ice
Compress
Elevate
Great fun to do when you’ve just finished your half hour of twice-daily at home physical therapy (split tibia, torn MCL on left leg last year… at least my doctors and PTs made for nice eye candy, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time).
FilmGeek, I think you just like showing up in my threads.
So work was actually not too bad. The people I worked with were very understanding and I didn’t have to go upstairs at all, and I sat down when I needed to.
In other news, I discovered an awkward side effect of icing the ankle. See, I get hives when it’s really cold out and it’s made worse if there’s moisture. We have some old towels that were ripped up to use as rags so I’ve been using those as the barrier between my skin and the bag of ice. The rag that I picked this time was on the thin side. I’m sitting here going “man, why does it itch?” and so I remove the bag and towel to discover I’ve given myself a few hives. Super super fun.
Best of all? It’s starting to bruise! Woo! I feel so accomplished, lol.
When I was in highschool, I was a cheerleader. Not by choice, mind you-- it was a small school, and cheerleading was compulsory for girls because it was the only PE they had.
Inept and resentful girls should never attempt a pyramid, especially with someone as balance-challenged as I am at the apex. I hit the ground like a sack of potatoes, and immediately started bawling.
I was on crutches for a few days. The swelling and pain lasted longer-- about a week and a half, IIRC. I used ice on it when I could, and anti-inflamatories. (I think I used Naproxen-- which I was on for a different malady-- sold now OTC as Aleve.) I stayed off of it as much as possible and kept it elevated.
Several times, both ankles. Various running/jumping/kicking martial arts injuries.
My advice (which I never follow myself): let it heal. I sprained my wrist badly two years ago, hardly took a break from the physical work I was doing (stuff mostly like ditch-digging, sawing with hand saws, etc), and it never healed right. Still hurts off and on today.
Also - IANAD - but I believe that after a bit you’re supposed to switch from ice to heat, to increase blood flow and therefore encourage healing.
I’ve also sprained both ankles more times than I can count. It’s so that I can normally walk normally in about three days. But this year I was out flying Kites with the boys at a park nearby when I stepped in a golper hole. It caused swelling and bruising along my innner foot and up my shin. I was in pain until late May and then reinjured it in June. I just started being able to walk normally last week.
I’ve had two really bad sprains, and one of them was topped off with a fracture.
The first, when I was seventeen, happened on my dad’s sailboat. I was going below deck to put some sails away when the wake from an idiot motorboater going to fast hit the docks. The stairs did a full dip and tilt just as I was stepping down. I landed on the side of my foot, and it folded under. Since I have long held the title of the family clutz, my dad wasn’t too concerned. He told me to soak my foot in the lake. When we got home, my mom wasn’t too concerned. She wanted to finish watching her movie before taking me to the ER. So, when the radiologist found that the sprain had pulled a ligiment so hard it had torn free, taking a chunk of bone with it, I felt very vindicated. I spent four weeks in a cast, taping a garbage bag over my leg every time I wanted to take a shower.
The second time was in college. I’d been visiting a friend who lived in a second floor apartment. As I was going down the stairs, my right foot did another hit-the-edge-and-fold-under. I heard the muscles on top of my foot tear. It was pretty gruesome. I ended up in an ace bandage for a couple of weeks and making a point to rewrap my foot during class breaks so I could gross out all the little sorority girls. Nothing like having the entire top of your foot from toe knuckles to ankle bone turn red, then dark purple, then blue, then green and yellow.
Funny thing is, it’s my left ankle that clicks and occasionally twitches in pain. Huh.
In 7th grade, I think, I was playing king of the hill on a snowbank when, while on the ground, a much larger friend of mine fell onto my foot. Wouldnt’ve been too bad if I hadn’t been falling away from them anyway, leaving the back of my ankle open to all 200 something pounds of them coming down from a few foot drop, bending my ankle in the direction IT SHOULDN’T.
In 3rd grade I sprained my ankle running away from a boy who was trying to kiss me on the play ground. I was really excited when I got the crutches - I was a huge attention hog, and didn’t want to give them up, even when my ankle got better. Then one day, I was called to the front of the class to get a paper, and I left my crutches at my desk. :eek: I was busted!
Of course, I’ve sinced sprained my ankle many times but haven’t had crutches since.
Not one of my 19 sprains, but a fun ankle story nonetheless.
As a couple of others have mentioned, I am a lifetime member of the blacktop basketball club. I play, a lot. I played even more when younger. We had a great neighborhood court when I was in high school that had a game going just about all of the time. Typical court. Blacktop, metal backboard, and the baskets were held up by a metal pipe that was about 15 inches around. Maybe you can see where this is going. I sure didn’t.
Picture me beating my man from the right elbow. I blow by him and rise up to dunk in traffic, which is always fun. I am imagining the trash talk I will be able to unleash on my friends after making them look bad. I jump, I dunk. As I am doing so, I am hit by a defender coming over to stop me, but he was a step too late.
This throws off my mid-air balance just a tad. So, while my hand is still on the rim, my lower body is twisting and moving out of bounds. To keep my balance I let go of the rim. At this point the spinning motion of my body has sort of flung my right leg out. As I am about to land on my left foot, my right leg meets the big metal pole, and the point of impact is exaclty where my ankle bone pushes out against my skin.
After the sound I would normally associate with an aluminum bat hitting an empty metal footlocker, I quickly realize the pain and complete lack of feeling I now have in my leg.
Nothing was hurt that a few minutes of heavy tingling didn’t fix, but my word that was painful.
I’ve had a number of sprains, but here are my two worst:
Nine years old—a few of us were playing in the neighbor’s cherry tree. I somehow managed to slip out of the tree, landing on my back with my leg under me and my ankle hit a root that was bulging out of the ground. It hurt like crazy–fortunately, we had some crutches in the rafter of our laundry room (left over from the previous occupants of the house) and I limped around on those for a few days.
A couple years ago–I was running to catch the bus. My shoes weren’t really heels, but they weren’t great for running. I caught my foot in a hole in the sidewalk and just went down, providing a wonderful show for the people on the bus. My ankle was really swollen for about five or six days. Probably should have gone to the doctor, but I just went for an Ace bandage & Advil until I could get around again.
I guess sprains really are more painful than breaks.