Ankle update: fracture after all.

[Sessy]

So, new X-rays were made (apart from the X-rays last week) and it turns out... The ankle is fractured. Like the forward part of the ankle joint, that bone there, is broken, but not all the way through which is why they didn't see it on the first X-ray that was made, that one was only from 1 angle.

Well I'm in gips now for the coming weeks. I hope I can get the money for the skatign camp back... Meh. :x

Well I'm building a LOT of jumping muscle in my left leg, I'll tell you that LOL! :lol:

[airyfairy76]

Oh no - you poor thing! 8O

I hope you make a speedy recovery Sessy - how long off the ice do you think?

[Mrs Redboots]

Poor you, Sessy, but as long as it's only the bone, not ligaments, you should heal quickly now.

Make a fuss so they don't immobilise it too hard, or you'll take for ages getting the muscle tone back.

[NickiT]

Sorry to hear that. Hope you heal quickly and are not off the ice for too long. Take it easy and take care.

Nicki

[Skittl1321]

Sorry to hear that :(

I hope it heals quickly.

[herniated]

Hope you heal quickly Sessy. That stinks. :cry: I've been there too. I had a stress fracture in my right foot about two years ago. I was put in a walking cast. Thank God I could take it off to drive. Anyway, speedy recovery!!

[renatele]

Ouch! Sorry to hear that... :cry: do take good care of it, and get better soon :)

[LilJen]

Yowch!! Been there, done that, now off the ice for 2.5 months after a nasty ankle fracture (but should be back soon). Heal quickly!!!

[SynchroSk8r114]

Sorry to hear about your ankle. Heal fast!

[dbny]

Sorry to hear it. Hope you heal soon, and do get your money back.

[looplover]

OH NO. Hope you heal soon!

[doubletoe]

I am so sorry to hear that. :( I hear chocolate helps bones heal faster. :roll: (Okay so that's a lie, but I figured chocolate always helps everything!).
Wishing you a speedy recovery!

[mikawendy]

Hugs to you {{{Sessy}}}. I hope your ankle heals quickly!!!!!

[momsk8er]

Sessy, sorry to hear about your ankle. Hope you recover really fast. 4-6 weeks is what they are saying? Or more?

[tidesong]

Hey Sessy hope you take good care of it and it heals well alright?

[Raye]

(((((((Prayers, hugs and well-wishes for a speedy recovery, Sessy)))))))

[LilJen]

Sessy, sorry to hear it. You have the utmost empathy from one who's also recovering from an ankle fracture. Get well soon!!

[miraclegro]

Hope you heal QUICKLY!

And i must agree about the chocolate! It is a real mind-healer if nothing else!

BTW, when i broke my ankle last year, i had the most amazing pectoral muscles when i was finished from using the crutches properly! (but the foot was another story - it was all shriveled after the cast, moon boot, air cast....ya ya ya)

Keep your chin up!

[montanarose]

Sending good healing vibes your way. I broke my ankle a year ago -- technically, it was a fracture of the fifth metatarsal bone subsequent to a really, really bad ankle sprain: aka a Jones fracture. It's healed quite nicely, and has had no effect on my skating at all . . . other things have, but that's another story :frus:

Let me just echo what someone said above: try to talk your doc into not keeping you in a cast too long. I was lucky to have had my broken ankle, as well as my broken wrist the year previously, tended to by the local sports medicine clinic -- my doc had previously cared for world class athletes such as Lance Armstrong, Herman Maier, et al. -- and their bias is to get people out of casts sooner rather than later, and to start PT at the earliest possible date. Anecdotally, a friend of mine who's an ex-PT told me that PTs are notorious for removing their own casts well before their docs (unless they're sports docs) recommend and for starting aggressive PT as soon as they can.

Good luck to you!

[blackmanskating]

I hope things turn around for you. Get better soon!!!

I am so sorry to hear that. :( I hear chocolate helps bones heal faster. :roll: (Okay so that's a lie, but I figured chocolate always helps everything!).
Wishing you a speedy recovery!

Chocolate does help everything. I can't get enough of the stuff.


BlackManSkating

[Sessy]

Sessy, sorry to hear about your ankle. Hope you recover really fast. 4-6 weeks is what they are saying? Or more?

Don't fall off your chair now - they're saying a YEAR.


They say I could try half-rotation jumps maybe by the end of this year. Maybe whole rotation in a year time, no 1,5 rotation at all for now.


Okay I don't believe them for a moment cuz doctors always lie to me about how long things will take but nonetheless. Thing is, the fracture healed half by itself. In the wrong position. Ligaments grew into the bone and now I've got to work them out of the bone again - if that's even possible. They say it might not be.

They took the cast off after about 2,5 weeks. Physiotherapy and stuff yeah - well, they showed me what to do. Insurance doesn't pay physio so that stinks big time, and besides, remember - dutch doctors still don't believe anything's wrong with my ankle? Seriously they should be sent to Africa as humanitarean aid, it's not like our health care will get worse for it - insurance companies are already sending people to Spain for all their joint surgeries... Bleh.

And massage and heat stuff and folk medicine - got a whole to do list from the doc there with smart advises, grande stuff :)
As well as his home phone number to call about the progress.

*sigh* I wonder how long it'll take before I can jump again. Is all I can think about all day. :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:
ESPECIALLY now that my left thigh went HUGE from jumping up to the 4th storey without crutches on 1 leg (there was no elevator) and I can jump real high up!!! But I can't land on right which sucks so I can't practice that axel even though I definately would have the height now which makes it very, very frustrating.

On the bright side, for the first time since february, I can STAND without pain. Even semi-normally walk. I'll take that for the moment - this week or so.

[LilJen]

Sessy, my surgeon said it wasn't uncommon for the healing to take 6-9 months altogether, and I'm in my late 30s (you're younger, so healing would be quicker, I imagine?). I really don't think I'll be jumping much until perhaps early next year (I fractured both my fibula--straight through, clean break--and a tip of my tibia), until I really feel good. I just finished several weeks of physical therapy, which helped a TON and now I can walk like a normal person, more or less, although I still need to be careful on uneven surfaces, and I have a lot of strength still to build up all around my ankle.

I would guess the time healing takes would depend on how messy your break was and how much soft tissue (muscles, ligaments, tendons) damage there is. I mean, for me, after about 5 weeks, the bone (hard tissue) was definitely healed, but the soft tissue is still painful and I imagine it will continue to be for some months. Hang in there and try, try, try to be very gentle with it. It would really suck to re-injure your ankle. Believe me, I have gone through serious skating withdrawal these past few months (oh, the odd, obsessive dreams I've had!) but I REALLY don't want to go through it again--so I'm erring on the conservative side and haven't yet been on the ice. Hang in there.

[sk8pics]

Hang in there, Sessy, and keep doing work to strengthen your ankle and your leg. You, too, LilJen. After I broke my ankle, I was about a week ahead of schedule all along in the healing process, but I'm still not back on the ice (after more than 9 months!). As far as my orthopedist is concerned, I can do whatever I feel like I can do. I don't have the strength or flexibility yet, but soon... like in about 2 or 3 more weeks! They told me, too, the swelling could last a year or more, and that also interferes with range of motion stuff.

You can do stuff all the time to help your ankle. Practice heel raises while you're standing in a line or talking to people, for example. Also practice bending your knee while keeping your foot flat. Stand on a step and try to lower your heel off the edge of the step, and work up to doing that with just the injured leg supporting all your weight. These are some of the things I learned from my PT and do them all the time. I'm not a PT or a doctor nor do I play one on TV, so this is just my own personal experience.

[Sessy]

Yeah I've got to do these heel rises and plunges stuff too - used to do them a lot before I quit dancing. Basically almost all the exercises I got were exercises I used to do when I was dancing, except for these strange rises where I have to stand on the outer sides of my foot and then roll up onto my toes - never had to do those before. So I'll definately be doing them again, cuz I know they work - before I quit dancing I had incredibly tough ankles, could run in stilettos and everything. Doc says it won't ever be like that anymore, but hey in skating you can compensate with harder boots I guess?

But, it hurts to do the exercises, so I'm scared I'll damage something more doing them... I dunno lol it's so hard to tell what pain is good because it gets you more strength and motion, and what pain is bad because you're damaging it, you know?
How do you guys distinguish?

As for my dreams... My dreams are just messed up, I dream about doing everything in skates. *sigh*. Yes I know I'm obsessed. :) Aren't we all? LOL! Ice = magic.

[Thin-Ice]

But, it hurts to do the exercises, so I'm scared I'll damage something more doing them... I dunno lol it's so hard to tell what pain is good because it gets you more strength and motion, and what pain is bad because you're damaging it, you know?
How do you guys distinguish?

My sports medicine doctor said PAIN (as in a sharp, stabbing sensation) is bad, but dull and achey or a strong discomfort is actually building strength and is good for the ankle.

[Sessy]

Dull pain good, sharp pain bad... Logical, really. :lol:

Ow is ache a word for a smaller sort of pain? I thought the two were synonyms.

[Skittl1321]

Sessy- pain is so variable- what one person calls moderate pain might be someone else's severe pain.

I describe pain going from dull to moderate to severe. I generally consider an ache to be a dull pain- something that is annoying, but you can live with- I consider an ache to be constant, - not sensation that comes with movement and then leaves.

But something that is a dull ache can become a sharp pain when you do something (like cough, or take a deep breath).

That's why it's so hard to diagnose pain- there are so many ways to describe it!


Good luck with rehabbing your ankle!

[Tiggerwoos]

Sorry to hear about your ankle Sessy. I had no idea that you'd fractured it.

Sending lots of positive vibes to you and I'm sure you've got a good medical team and you'll be back jumping in less than a year. That's probably just the worst case scenario and I'm sure it will take less than that.

[Sessy]

Yeah they always say the worst case scenario. The way I'm figuring it right now is, work it to strength till real skating starts in october again, then skate easy on, no jumping, maybe half rotation, till like december, then start back on the singles again and indeed hold off the axel for a while till early spring. I've gotta pas my MIF before my freestyle anyway and for the freestyle I need to work on the spins more than I did on the jumps so I'm figuring I might still test what I had planned.

Oh here's a holiday pic btw.
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1365/1031052052_74c4f8b4b6.jpg
:lol:


The doc said it needed to hurt when doing the exercises, mildly, but like when doing the exercises, not just overall. Apparently the soft tissue calcified or something like that... I can't translate it, LOL! I totally get what happened but I can't express it in English. But it shouldn't hurt like, badly he said... I think it's probably just like that what he meant, that it shouldn't hurt sharply, but dull is okay.