Hobbled

I have been hobbling about in great pain.

I damaged my ankle in an accidental fashion. You don't normally have to do very much to instigate pains when you're getting near sixty, but this was a particularly painful one, with a specific cause, that would have hurt even a younger person.

We were walking the dog in a park on Thursday, and she decided she was going to investigate an area of river bank that was just one metre further in front of where the five metre dog lead had already allowed her, so she had to pull at me to try to get it to stretch further.

This is a Rule of Dog. Dog always wants to be approximately one metre further away from you than the maximum length of the lead they are attached to.

As I was momentarily pulled along, and looking up to see where she was going now, my right foot found a hole in the ground that my brain wasn't expecting to be there, so I stepped in it and my ankle turned. It bloody hurt for a bit, and I cursed appropriately as I hopped about a bit.

After a few minutes, the immediate level ten pain had subsided back down to level three-ish, and we could carry on, finish the walk, and go about the remaining part of the day normally.

Later that evening though, my foot and ankle began to throb. And when I stood up to go off and make a cup of tea, it hurt a lot. I couldn't actually put any weight on it and had to sit down again. I turned to J and said "This bloody hurts. It's gone back up to level nine, I can't walk on it."

My ankle appeared to have grown, and the skin had gone a bit red too. Probably a sprain then, but a delayed reaction one.

She ordered me to stay on the sofa and put my foot up on a footstool, with a cushion underneath it, and gave me pain killers. I proceeded to wince and gurn for the rest of the evening as waves of pain went through my ankle.

A good night's sleep, foot raised on a pillow, and then resting it through all of yesterday – and using my walking stick to take some of my weight off it when I needed to move for other biological reasons – has let it start settling down to be less painful to walk on now.

J has gone off to work today, and I have been left with orders NOT to do too much, or I might make it worse again.

There didn't appear to be any definition of what 'too much' would be, but I would guess that going out to work in the garden for a few hours, or taking the dog out for a two or three mile jaunt on the cliffs, would probably qualify.

I feel such a fraud in putting my feet up (no sense in leaving the other foot feeling left out) when it feels better today, but I suspect J's warnings about antagonising it if I get active on it too early again might be wise.

Reading blogs on the RSS reader, cups of tea, and watching the world go by out of the window it is then.