What I Learned From Spraining My Ankle
Originally published on November 16th, 2019
A little over two months ago, I sprained my ankle. How, you may ask? Well, when I went to visit Emma in Oregon back in September, I went via train. The trip was supposed to take twelve hours, but after some complications around 2:00 AM, it instead took a whole fourteen. Also, I didn’t eat anything the entire time. Once I got off the train and found Emma, we got boba (nope, I still hadn’t eaten). After getting the boba, we started walking again and, seemingly all of a sudden, I got very dizzy, started to fall over, tripped over a lip in the concrete, and fell over- spraining my ankle in the process.
Yeah, not my best day (this was, by the way, 100% my fault. Emma had nothing to do with it).
I spent the next couple days icing it, but I didn’t do anything else. Emma kept asking me if I wanted to wrap it, but I kept insisting it was fine. Apparently, I thought a swollen ankle the size of a tennis ball was completely normal. While in Oregon I (or, Emma) took fairly good care of it. It was iced for most of the time, but I still walked on it a lot. In my defense, I was in Oregon. It’s a really beautiful state. I wanted to go on walks. It was also the last time I would see Kiana until I visit her in Spain, and how could I let a friendship that was basically founded on walks go walk-less for longer than it had to?
Yeah, I know. Not my best days (for the ankle, at least. I, on the other hand, had a great time).
It took a couple of weeks, but eventually the swelling went way down and it didn’t hurt to stand on it as much. I was able to move into my dorm room without too much difficulty, though my mom did insist I take the elevator instead of going up five flights of stairs to get to the sixth floor. I kept forgetting I’d injured it, until I’d have to run to catch a door, or chase after a child, or, the most unfortunate, pretend to be a monkey for a play.
Remember how back in October I redacted one of my statements in the Detox Tea Talk and said I was actually doing a play? Well, I was supposed to. But I got to the first rehearsal, and was physically unable to do most of what would be required. My ankle kept giving out. I was crushed. Finally, I went in to the clinic and got it looked at. The practitioner I met with was surprised it was still bothering me two months after the initial injury, and ordered an x-ray and gave me a brace which I have been instructed to wear for as much as possible. The frustrating thing, which Emma pointed out when I told her how the appointment had gone, is if I’d just continued to ice it and stayed off of it as much as possible after returning from Oregon, it probably would have healed completely by now. My problem was I had trouble believing anything was wrong with it. I couldn’t wrap my head around how a simple fall could render my ankle this impaired.
The thing is, I assumed it would have had to have been a much worse situation for my ankle to be as injured as it was. Other people sprained ankles all the time, and their stories were worse than just falling over after being on a train for fourteen hours. Those who were car accidents, or fell down stairs, were playing a sport, or anything other than my situation- they deserved to go to the doctor and get it looked at. They deserved the ice and the brace and the x-ray. Not me. I was fine.
I’ve talked about this a little bit lately, but I have trouble believing my own pain when everyone around me seems to have so much more of it. Imagined or not, I ignore my whole predicaments and try my best to be there for everyone else. Done healthfully, that’s a good thing. It is possible to be there for other people and take care of yourself at the same time. I’m in therapy to learn how to do just that. But ignoring your sprained ankle because one of your friends is in the hospital, or pretending you’re not having a bad day because one of your friends is depressed doesn’t help anyone. Your sprained ankle and your bad day are still things that need to be looked at and figured out. You can’t help anyone if you aren’t helping yourself. You can’t pour from an empty cup. You need to put your oxygen mask on first. I’m still figuring out how to do that, but I’ll get there. I’ll learn.