Things I learned from my doctor
Regarding the sprain:
1. A sprain can result in a fracture: the ligament can pull loose a chip of bone. Operational implication: X-ray, but now not until Monday.
2. Should have gone to doctor sooner.
3. After a bad sprain avoid ibuprofen and aspirin (and acetaminophen, I imagine, but I wouldn’t take that stuff on a bet: special request from my kidneys, who hope to last me through retirement). They are anticoagulants, so if you take them your toes can turn an interesting shade of blue.
4. He recommended an “air splint”: a little plastic doohickey that costs close to $50 but keeps the ankle rigid. He specified “Left” since it was my left ankle, but he’s out of touch: they are now universal (fit left or right). I got one with gel liners, which the package suggested could be placed in the fridge for 20 minutes to cool the sprained place.
5. Ordway Drug Store in downtown Monterey is marvelous: it’s a real drugstore, with a focus on medical needs, including braces, shoes, crutches, and an enormous staff of busy pharmacists. This is one of two places in town that will actually compound medicines (using a little pill press to create pills), and they also accept old meds for proper disposal (rather than flushing them into the water supply or dumping them for the landfill). AND they are locally owned. So now I’m transferring my Bank of America account to Monterey Credit Union, and all my Rx from Safeway to Ordway. (This lesson will not have so much utility as the others, but it struck me as quite good to know. For me.)
I would of thought that you would of reviewed the link I sent you a little more carefully as I had hinted or inferred that you would require a “lite cast”
Now that it’s been a week without the immobilizing that was suggested then the bone will have begun to fuse in whatever way it rested after the last letter of the alphabet you were writing with your big toe.
So more than likely you will be permanently deformed in that specific area and will either have to purposefully crack that chip or live the rest of your retirement in discomfort.
So much for the Left foot and the Pilates recommendation …
Nick
15 July 2011 at 7:08 pm
Well, I didn’t. Can’t change that, so I’ll totter on.
LeisureGuy
15 July 2011 at 9:26 pm