Recently I severely sprained my left ankle. I was really frightened while it was happening because the left ankle is the one I broke back in Dec. 2010, breaking it so badly that my foot wasn’t attached to any bones and it just flopped. So on Thursday, when I could see that I could at least walk, I just kept saying “Thank You!” in gratitude that the ankle wasn’t broken again.
However, as sprained ankles usually go, my ankle blew up, turned color, and hurt so badly that I couldn’t even gently put my foot on the floor even while I was sitting down!
Thank heaven for ice! I did the whole RICE – rest, ice, compression, and elevation.
The compression part is what I teach in all of my books, DVDs, etc. But this situation proved to me how quickly these treatments work!
Having a sprained ankle was especially bad because I was at the beginning of my training program to walk the El Camino de Santiago, which is 300-500 miles long depending on where you start, and which guide you read. Regardless, even the shortest route is really long!
Needless to say I need to start training way before I take that journey, and I was up to four miles a day (15 minute walking mile), and Saturday I was upping the mileage to five miles a day. Bummer! However, I’m happy to say that what I teach REALLY WORKS! I started to work on all of the lower leg muscles, using a tennis ball and my knee, and then worked deeply on all of the muscles and joints in my foot.
As I mentioned above, I used all of the self-treatment techniques taught in Treat Yourself to Pain Free Living and it worked great! By the next day I could walk slowly, and by the second day I was walking almost normally although I wasn’t up to speed walking yet. That took several days, but the pain and swelling were gone by the first day. I’ve decided I need to write a new eBook titled Stop Sprained Ankle Pain FAST! I’ll let you know when it’s finished.
Take a look at the muscles that are injured when you have a sprained ankle, it will really make sense when you see how your lower leg muscles cross over your ankle and insert into the bottom of your foot. When you sprain your ankle the muscles go into multiple spasms, which puts a severe strain on the tendons and then pulls on the bones of your foot.
I’m happy to say that I’m back on the road today after taking the weekend off to help the healing, I think I’ll stick with four miles just to make sure my ankle is up to it. I’ll let you know how it goes, but I feel pretty good that it’s going to be just fine.
BTW, if you have ever done the El Camino de Santiago, please let me know as I’d love to get some first-hand understanding of it.
Wishing you well,
Julie