It’s pretty sad when you look at your friend’s brand new baby, all fresh and new and gurgly, and your eyes wander down to baby’s pudgy little ankles - the right ankle, to be precise - and all you can think of is how brand new and undamaged all those fresh, new ankle ligaments and tendons are. How unsprained.
I’d grown complacent, obviously. After surgery five years ago to tighten up my loosened ankle tendons caused by too many sprains to count, I had gone without a single injury to my bionic ankle. It was like new! Like that baby’s! Except for the hideous surgical scar, it even looked normal. Sigh.
And so, early one morning three weeks ago, I ran on the dirt trail next to the paved path around Lake Calhoun. I do this because it’s easier on the knees (irony here). The morning light was wan, dusky, inarticulate. I was still half asleep and distracted by the noisy conversation of the two chattering women running a little bit behind me. And I stepped on a big, fat rock in the middle of the path - one that’s been there forever, and which I have not stepped on, ever, in years of running that path. I’ve since gone back and found the rock. It’s a tip-of-the-iceberg rock; completely undislodgeable. I want to paint it bright orange to warn others, but I fear that they’ll be so distracted by the orange rock that they’ll actually step on it and be similarly sprained.
I knew immediately it was bad. I even heard a crack when it happened - not super loud; just enough under the decibel meter to allow me to think, “It could have just been the tendon snapping over the bone. Yeah. It was that.” It swelled instantaneously. I mean, literally - I pulled down my sock and it was all puffy, right away, like that baby’s pudgy ankle, but in a really bad way.
I recently read about a study that was done, presumably using college students, showing that cursing actually makes people able to tolerate pain better. (I told a friend of mine about the study and she said, “They had to do a study to show THAT?”) I hope those women behind me knew I was exercising pain management that morning. I do know that all the effenheimers I expleted helped me get to the endorphin stage, where my body basically deadened my ankle pain for the mile I had left to get back home. (Just so you know how sickly addicted I am to running: for a brief moment, I actually thought, “Maybe I can run through it.”)
After the urgent care x-rays showed no broken bones, I was told to see a specialist a week later as follow-up. I sheepishly went to my old surgeon, whom Steve fondly calls “Dr. Cheeks” (because he’s always running a little behind - thank you Bart Simpson). The bruising went from my toes halfway up my calf. I told Dr. Cheeks, “I’m so sorry - I ruined your beautiful surgery.” And he told me I could run. I had to take it easy, I had to wear a horribly uncomfortable brace and pay attention to pain and swelling, but I could run.
So, I think I’m back. I replaced the Brace-of-Torment with strategically placed athletic tape. Last Sunday I ran 12 miles and it was good. I’ve run this week. I’m planning 14-16 miles for tomorrow, depending on how it feels. But I still look at the skinny, undamaged, colt-like ankles I see running around the lakes and, indifferent to the people who own them, I covet them.
