Sprang my left ankle when I was hiking about on Sandia mountain in New Mexico last month and didn't give it another thought. I returned home to cycling, mowing the yard, taekwondo, working on my feet, etc etc. This wasn't my first sprang ankle after all. I would tape it up when doing taekwondo and ice it up afterwards and after work. Would also eat up the motrin like candy.
Four weeks later, I'm wondering why it hasn't healed. I truthfully thought I was just over doing it, nothing serious. I decide to go to a doctor for an xray and find out it's a fracture. Not the real bad kind, just a chip of bone off the interior aspect of my tibia at the very end of the bone where it connects into the ankle bones. Thank God the tendons and ligaments were intact and undamaged.
Now I'm in a walking boot splint for 3 weeks until I return to a podiatrist and decide if they're going to do surgery to remove the chip. I sure hope no surgery, surgeons, surgery scare me. I'm a nurse and used to work a minor surgery clinic as a navy corpsman. I want no part of the knife if it can be helped. The podiatrist is 80-90% certain that I will heal well enough without surgery. The bone chip may or may not reattatch itself. Will learn more after more xrays june 10.
So, I am babying this thing as best I am able, wearing the walking boot splint at all waking hours and at work. The only times I remove it are to shower and to sleep. 43 years old and my first fracture. As of this writing, it only hurts after work, and the swelling is all but gone. There's only minor edema, nothing really and the discomfort is more of a dull ache than a pain. The walking boot splint is a pain in the ass, but I do not want surgery so I am following doctor's orders.
More to follow next month so will just limp along now until the xrays in june.
