[pct-l] Ankle Pain

[Bighummel@aol.com (Bighummel@aol.com)]

Charlie,

Good advice from Rich and Jeffrey.  I badly sprained an ankle playing 
basketball several years ago, so bad that the doc said it would have been 
better to break it!  He recommended a cast for eight weeks.  I objected 
saying that it wasn't broken and here was his justification in argument:

We can put it in a cast and force you to stay off it and let it COMPLETELY 
heal and have a brand new ankle (note: "brand new" includes no muscles) in 
eight weeks,

OR

We can wrap it up in an ACE bandage and put you on crutches and in two weeks 
it will feel so good that you'll stop using the crutches.  You'll put weight 
on the ankle before it is fully healed and prevent it from COMPLETELY 
healing.  

In another two weeks it will feel so good that you'll take the Ace bandage 
off.  It will feel weak and sore but you'll push it and exercise it and 
further prevent complete healing.  By the time that eight weeks will have 
passed, your ankle will still be weak, still be unhealed, and you still wont 
give it the time to properly heal.  You'll probably start playing on it again 
and you'll probably hurt it again (does this sound a lot like Jeffrey's 
message??) and in just a little while you'll be back in here telling me how 
you hurt it even worse this time.    You will end up having an ankle that is 
a weak link for the rest of your life.

I chose the cast.  I rehabed the ankle for 6 months after shedding the cast, 
taped the ankle every time I played for another 6 months and now I have to 
look at photos to remember which ankle it was.  

So, Charlie, my suggestion is go way overboard on the support for longer than 
you think you need it.

Greg "Strider" Hummel