My Twisted Ankle Sprain

I’m such a friggin clutz, and if you read my facebook or twitter posts this morning, you already know what I’m talking about- my twisted ankle.

You know what really makes this story funny?  I rolled my foot and twisted my ankle right after scolding our kids to stop playing on the stairs because, “Someone could get hurt!”

I’ll wait until you’re done laughing…

No, I didn’t step on any toys.  No, the kids didn’t get hurt.  Nothing amazing happened except I stepped down wrong, rolled my ankle, heard and felt several cracks on the right side of my right foot (the one I rolled, obviously), whimpered loudly and fell on my ass.

In flies my hero, my husband, the man who plays ultimate disc and frequently has a twisted ankle sprain, or just plain old breaks his foot…excuse me, feet, rather.  Yes, he’s broken both feet. Did he seek medical attention? Of course not. Now he has two ankles on each foot instead of one, and this is the person I’m to rely on for my treatment.

“How screwed am I?” I think to myself.  Okay, maybe I vocalized it a little bit, just not in those exact words. Sorry, babe.

My Twisted Ankle Treatment

My twisted ankle - totally styling with the purple toes and ace bandage.

After determining that I didn’t break anything by wiggling my toes and moving my ankle around, my husband decided that I sprained my ankle most likely.  Movement was still painful.  Hell, not moving the foot was painful too, I’m not going to lie.  I felt like my foot had turned into one giant bruise.

An ice pack, a little compression, some elevation and an episode of “Army Wives” to get my mind off of my foot, and I was feeling better…until I tried to walk on it.

How to Heal a Twisted Ankle

I decided to do a little research and found a sports injury site that talked about twisted ankle sprains and what to do for them to prevent the damage from getting worse. I realized that while putting ice on the injury was the smart thing to do, icing it for too long could actually cause swelling instead of preventing or reducing it.  They recommended, on the site, to only apply ice for 15 minutes.  I’d had ice on my foot for over an hour.

Oops.

So I removed the ice from my twisted ankle and went into my husband’s gym bag in search of a wrap.  As instructed on the site, I began wrapping at the toes and worked my way up to about 4 inches above the ankle.

I am now sitting on my couch with my new laptop, instead of at my desktop computer in my office, foot wrapped and elevated on the ottoman and a heating pad behind my back because, well, my back hurts too.  Go figure.

Twisted Ankles and Back Spasms – This is not my life!

Seriously. I twist my ankle walking down the stairs, and I hurt my back sitting on the floor with my friend’s baby.  I don’t have to do anything strenuous, and I still get all sorts of jacked up.  I’m already in physical therapy for my back.  Hopefully my twisted ankle sprain heals quickly and I don’t have to see the doctor for it.  That would suck. I have enough to deal with. Seriously.

Question:  Have you ever twisted your ankle or sprained it?  What kind of treatment did you receive?

Related articles

• A Reader’s Quick Recovery From a Painful Ankle Sprain (fitsugar.com)
• Will my sprained ankle heal on its own? (zocdoc.com)
• A sprain in my neck! (jnkparmar.wordpress.com)