Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Ankle Gate 2011

We interrupt our regularly scheduled vacation coverage to bring you this breaking news:

Maggie is a clutz and managed to not only fall, but also injury herself on her vacation.

SHOCKER!

I'll give you a minute to catch your breath due to the surprise.

Yeah, that was sarcasm, because if you know me AT ALL you know that I fall all the time. It is pretty rare however for me to actually hurt myself beyond a bruise. But this time I really managed to screw the pooch.

Let me set the stage: there I was on the cruise ship enjoying an amazing dinner of Italian food at the specialty restaurant on board. We were between the first and second courses (meaning I had just finished my beef ravioli and was waiting for my arugula and mozzarella salad) and I had to pee. And not just pee, but pee like woah. 2 glasses of wine, water, and a cocktail will do that to you. I also had to take the elevator down to another level to get to the bathroom, so when I got to the bathroom I was in a hurry.

That was my downfall.

I remember opening the door, walking in quickly, making note of the woman mopping the floor, hearing her say "be careful the floor is very we--" and that is when I wiped out. Full on, slide out, ankle slamming into the stall. I hopped back up, played it off, did my business, but I knew something was wrong. Because my ankle hurt. Not just "ow I hurt my ankle" but "HOLY SHIT WHAT DID I JUST DO."

I walked back up to the table (I could still walk ok so that was promising) and finished dinner. However, at the end of dinner I leaned down to feel my ankle....and yeah, it was swollen to about three times the normal size.

I spent the rest of the night with ice on my ankle and it propped up on some pillows. Luckily, I could still walk on it, but for the rest of trip a rather spectacular bruise appeared that just seemed to worsen as the days went on (this happened the Saturday before my return to DC the following Thursday). Since there didn't seem to be real improvement, I started to get worried and the morning after my return to town I got my ass to the Urgent Care Center and had an X-ray.

The good news? My ankle wasn't broken--hurray! Although I wasn't too surprised since I had been walking around on it for almost a week. But I did have a bad sprain and a small possibility of a ligament tear (which would SUCK), but if I took it easy for a week and didn't run for two weeks I should be fine. I am now pretty sure I don't have a ligament tear because there has been a lot of improvement the past couple days.

The worst thing about all this is how it's impacting my 5K training. I finally got myself to 3 miles on the treadmill and was planning to begin my outdoor training as soon as I got back from vacation. But now I will have been out of the game for 3 weeks--not good when my race is coming up at the end of October. I have been still getting to the gym though; I can use the stationary bike, elliptical machine, and weights so I haven't been a total waste of space. But I am still pretty nervous.

But now the good part: a picture! Warning, this shows some pretty bad bruising, so if you don't want to see it...don't look.



This was taken on Sunday (4 days ago). It's much better now, I promise. You can see all the yellow and green of the bruise, ew. The dark part near the bottom of the foot was actually bleeding into the tissue from the injury, which is what made them think I might have a ligament tear. Luckily, I think I dodged that bullet!

1 comment:

Chris said...

I think its worth noting that, despite the injury, Maggie was a trooper and still wandered around Tallin with us AND completed our walking tour of Copenhagen.