Saturday, March 6, 2010

It finally happened


I finally injured myself at judo.

This is my lovely boot. So far it allows me to stand if I'm careful and don't put too much weight on my right foot. But soon it will let me walk! Which is awesome, because I am some seriously terrible at crutches.

We were doing speed/form exercises - all forward throws have a part where you crouch down in front of the other person and spring up. We were using that motion to propel us into a short sprint, return, and fling ourselves back into the crouch. On my last one, my foot missed the turn, I tried to walk to the tops of my toes, and my ankle went sideways.

I called N and we had a nice little trip to urgent care (where the doctor told me she was considering taking judo back up, but that I was really hurting judo's case in this argument) got some x-rays, decided my ankle wasn't broken (but that she thought she saw something a little weird in my x-rays), got my lovely boot and went home. Painwise I'm doing great - she gave me a script for Vicodin if I need it, but so far I'm doing great on ibuprofen. I'm not even doing the thing where you keep close track of when you're allowed to have your next dose.

Next day, I call our normal doctor, who starts out all "if it seems to be doing fine, you don't need to come in" then hears the "maybe something weird in the x-rays" and changes tunes to "please go see the nice podiatrist lady." So I do. More x-rays, including ones of my other foot for comparison. My bones have all their little corners, but the shin bones on my injured leg are a smidge further apart than the ones on my left - so she's worried that the ligament holding them together also ruptured. She thinks I'm going to be at least 4 weeks in the boot, then physical therapy (no timeline) before back to normal. And by normal she means wear a supportive brace whenever I'm active for at least a year. Worst case is that I do need minor surgery either for the shinbones ligament or if the outer sprain ones refuse to heal nicely. But won't be able to tell til after physical therapy.

I'm terrified of what all this will cost. Also what my stress levels and metabolism are gonna do without regular exercise. Not much I can do about any of it right now.

BUT - Vlad is MUCH better, and it looks like we don't have to take him to the vet for about two months - as opposed to every two weeks. So I guess my ankle is getting all the money we're saving on vet bills :(