better off broken
“It’s going to take a while,” the doc says from behind his mask.
I feel grateful beyond words to have a family physician when thousands of my fellow Canadians don’t. And to be able to get an appointment two days after calling for one is virtually unheard of. But I’m not liking what I’m hearing this morning.
“How long is ‘awhile’?” I look him straight in the eye.
“It’s hard to say,” he says. “Ankles are funny things. A broken one usually heals more quickly than a sprained one.”
“So I’ve heard.” I reply with a sardonic laugh.
“Some people are up and about in a matter of days. Others, well, it takes a while…” His voice trails off. “At your age, things take longer to heal…” His voice trails off again.
Clearly, he’s not going to commit to a timeframe. Doesn’t have a crystal ball, I guess.
He’s already told me – based on the bruising and swelling (which he notes are ‘substantial’), and manipulating and massaging the joint (which hardly hurt at all) – that an x-ray is ‘not indicated.’
“I really don’t think it’s broken,” he said. “All the signs say ‘sprain.'”
I agree. I hadn’t thought it was broken either. I am here to validate my intuition and accede to the wishes of caring friends who kept asking when I was going to get it x-rayed.
“It’s a level one or two sprain and, as I said, they usually take a bit longer to heal…”
Nooooooo! Rider me silently screams.
From the sounds of it, I would have been better off breaking it rather than spraining it and of course even better off having not injured it at all. Serves me right for thinking it was a good idea to go for a little walk around the block before heading out for a nice long rip on my motorcycle.
Oh, the irony.
I was eight weeks in a cast and a splint when I broke my wrist and thumb in November 2021. That was followed by months of physiotherapy to get my manual strength back. I was sufficiently recovered by April 2022 to start riding again. That said, I have chronic pain in my left thumb, which was dislocated in addition to being broken in the motorcycle oops!
Had this new injury been to the right foot, which operates the back brake, it would have been less problematic because the front brake, which is applied with the right hand provides ninety percent of a motorcycle’s stopping power. But no, it’s the left ankle, the one used to ‘push down’ or ‘pull up’ the clutch pedal to shift gears. Grrrrrr.
But I’m not ready to give up on this riding season. Not yet. Not this early.
Stay tuned.
© 2024 Susan Macaulay. I invite you to share my poetry and posts widely, but please do not reprint, reblog or copy and paste them in their entirety without my permission. Thank you.
