DT Active Life 050617 for web-REVISED

health & wellness
Surviving a
Minor Injury
It can take quite some time and
ingenuity to recover from a sprained
foot or other mishap. Here are some
tips to help speed up the process.
IN CASE OF INJURY...
When I was seven, I broke my wrist on one of the very
last days of second grade before school let out for
the summer. Back then I had no adult responsibilities.
My only concern was keeping my plaster cast dry for
six weeks while I, unable to swim at our town park with my friends,
stood waist deep in the water with a plastic bread bag secured
around my arm.
I’ve been more than lucky not to have suffered any serious injuries
since then, but a recent sprained foot poked a serious hole in the
memory of my seven-year-old-self calmly lazing through a restful
summer recuperation as I waited to get back in the water. In fact,
nothing surprised me more than how completely sidelined I felt by
what I considered to be a minor injury.
The pitfalls are out there: tree roots, loose gravel, steep inclines
and rocky slopes. And so it was for me, hiking up a hill in deep
snow, when my foot rolled sideways. I knew I had
hurt myself somewhat, but it wasn’t until I woke up at
midnight in excruciating pain that I knew that I needed
to get to the emergency room. After a struggle to get
dressed and get a sock over my painfully swollen foot,
I crawled across the floor to the top of the stairs. I then
had to push myself down the stairs, inching downward
in a sitting position. At the bottom my husband handed
me an old, hand-carved wooden cane that we found at
an antique shop and kept in an umbrella stand as decoration. It was
utterly useless. Our front steps were icy. The struggle to get to the
car while hopping on my right foot, and actually getting through the
lobby of the ER, was exhausting.
A couple of hours, some good pain medication and an X-ray
later, I learned I had a sprain. Not a break thankfully, but a painful
inconvenience that would certainly need time to heal. My foot was
wrapped in an ace bandage and I was issued a pair of crutches and
sent home. Here are some of the obvious and not-so-obvious things
I learned the hard way:
n Read the doctor’s orders thoroughly. Don’t
just listen to your doctor’s recommendations. Read everything the
nurse gives you, and not just the first few paragraphs. If I had done
so, I would have remembered that I needed to continue icing and
elevating my foot into the 2nd and 3rd day. Instead, I slacked
off after the first day. A week later I had to repeat the entire
icing/elevation process to reset my recuperation.
n Stay home from work for at least two days,
if not three. I only stayed home one day. Feeling invincible, I headed
for the office. It was a mistake. While I pretty much stayed in my
chair and everyone kindly helped me, I couldn’t elevate or ice my
foot. The healing process stagnated and I exhausted myself
hobbling around.
n Don’t do any long-distance driving. On the third
day after my injury, I took a three hour trip to a prior commitment.
Another mistake. I figured that my sprained left foot wouldn’t have
to do anything but rest while I drove, but it was one of the worst
things I could have done. By the end of the trip, my foot, resting
in one position on the floor of the car each way for three hours,
turned into a swollen, numb, painful stiff stump. Next time I’ll
cancel and stay home.
18 | DACKS & TOGA activelife
n Take it easy. Yes, even though you are getting help from
loved ones, you will see the chores are piling up around the house.
Or maybe you don’t like being dependent. You begin to feel a little
better and start taking on all of your usual tasks. You start moving
around frequently on your crutches, and hopping and standing on
one foot. Don’t. If you do, you will start to overcompensate with the
rest of your body. Pretty soon, your neck aches, your hands ache
from the crutches and from scooting up and down the stairs, then
your good foot starts hurting and you’ve pinched a nerve in your
armpit from slamming around on the crutches. You may not have
re-injured your foot, but you’ve risked sustaining another injury to
another part of your body.