Sprained ankle

I sprained my ankle two years ago, and the sprain was so bad they treated it as if it were broken.

I had crutches and a walking cast. I used the crutches for about a week (keeping as much weight as possible off the ankle), and the walking cast for about 3 weeks. I'd say I was back to normal after about a month. I didn't take any prescription pain medications, just lots of ibuprofen.

----------

Embrace the Crap!

I sprained my ankle very badly a whole decade ago and at the time it took about one week to heal (no limp, no pain). It's been weak ever since, and last year I twisted it again the exact same way, on a surface that was only slightly uneven - guess the original injury messed something up permanently. The second time was actually worse than the first one - I nearly passed out in the middle of the road. That one took nearly a month to heal completely. I didn't take pain medication either time, but both times I spent a week with the ankle very tightly bandaged up so that I could walk normally and put weight on it.

For a sprain the first thing you do is pile ice packs on it to get the swelling down. Then you keep it tightly bandaged, or use an ankle brace, even while you're sleeping (letting it flop around will hurt enough to keep you awake otherwise). Pain medication isn't really necessary.

(Edit: I was about mid-teens the first time I sprained it, and I was at a camp where there was saltwater canoeing - sitting down, so I participated and had the ankle thoroughly soaked in seawater for two days. Not sure if the combination of growth spurt age and seawater speeded the healing up because in retrospect, it should have taken a lot longer - I'd fallen off a rock and my foot had bent out at under 90 degrees to the shin, felt like it'd been broken at first.)

----------

“You’re the ‘god’ here. Why are you worrying about questions?”

http://evilnovel.wordpress.com
http://worldsofmint.wordpress.com

I'm by no means a medical expert, but being as unco as me means that I've had more than my fair share of sprains, so here's my experience:

Depends on how badly they sprain it, really - whether it's just a simple sprain or if they really went over on it and bruised the bone. I had a fall a few years ago - stepped off a bus, went over on my ankle and hit the ankle bone on the curb. I was in agony for well over a week with it, but I was still limping and in a fair amount of pain for at least a month afterwards. And for even more months after that, my ankle was still pretty weak.

However, I've had simpler sprains where I've been fine and walking around without difficulty the next day.

In terms of treatment - elevation, rest, painkillers and an ice-pack. An ace-bandage is also a good idea to help support the ankle if you do have to move, and to help control the swelling, but I find that I need to take the bandage off fairly regularly, otherwise I'm compromising the circulation to my foot. After my bad incident, I spent the entire weekend on the couch with my foot up, using several ice-packs per day, taking up to the maximum dosage of painkillers, and generally feeling quite sorry for myself.

I sprained my ankle last spring and it went almost exactly like this. I was doing an agility test in PE (it was something like guy sprints) and bent down a bit too far. In the ER after the x-ray they couldn't tell if it was sprained or broken, so they just treated it like was broken. I can't really remember if they prescribed me anything, but if it was it was just pain medicine. My ankle's still weak, and very easy to tweak.

----------

I had a level-2 sprain last year (no fracture). I stepped off my porch and my foot folded under me. I thought it was broken and felt like I was going to barf. It hurt like hell, swelled up big time and my foot was black and blue for weeks. The swelling stuck around for a week or so. I could walk on it that day with a bad limp and the next day it was markedly better.

Funnily enough, I did it again, on the other foot, last week. Not as bad, but my head was swimming for a sec and it is still swollen and a little bruised. It doesn't hurt to walk on it, but if I try to bend my foot to the side (like you do when you're looking at the bottom of your foot) it hurts a lot.

I've sprained both of my ankles within the last year and a half. The first one I walked at least a mile on after spraining--bad idea, that one was over a year ago and it still bothers me sometimes. The second one seems to have healed completely--I was more careful there. With mine, I tried to stay off them completely for about 4 days each (crutches, or hopping, or just lying around). After that, walking with one crutch or a walking stick for maybe a week

I might have taken ibuprofin for a week or two, but honestly, if you're not walking on it (and you shouldn't be) then there isn't much pain, at least in my experience.

Also, again this is just my experience, you shouldn't be limping. If you're limping it's because it hurts, and if it hurts you should stop walking. If it's not a terribly bad sprain (and mine weren't), then you should be walking fine within a couple of weeks, but being careful not to overdo it.

I'm an athletic trainer, and deal with sprained ankles for a living. I'll outline the 3 levels of a sprain, how long it takes to heal, and what you might do with them. You can mail me if you need more info.

First a sprain is a stretch of a tear of a ligament. (If its a stretch of tear of a muscle, its a strain.)

So a grade 1 or "minor" sprain is an overstretch of the ligament or very minor tearing. People who do this commonly have a little bit of swelling on the lateral side (or outer ankle), maybe a slight bit of bruising will show up the next day or day after, but in general they can walk with a slight limp. Care wise, ice, ace wrap, and elevation is typical, like someone highlighted earlier (thats the RICE principle... Rest Ice Compression Elevation). Most people begin walking normally within a few days to a week at most.

A grade 2 or "moderate" sprain is moderate tearing of the ligament fibers (but not a complete tear - for that, see grade 3). People with grade 2 sprains have a lot more swelling, and the bruising that shows up the next day can be drug down by gravity into the toes, even though the injury is at the ankle joint. If they can walk on their own, its with a severe limp - most doctors prescribe crutches if a person can't walk fairly normally. It takes probably the better part of 2-3 weeks, especially if the person is on crutches for a week or two.

A grade 3 or "severe" sprain is a complete tear of a ligament (or multiple ligaments). This results in a ton of swelling - the whole foot and ankle might swell rather than it staying in just the ankle like in all grade 1 and most grade 2s. Because the ligaments are torn, there is a lot of bleeding, so the bruising that shows up definitely ends up in the toes, and ends up being a black or deep purple color (rather than the yellows or greens with bits of the darker colors you see in grade 2s). Grade 3s are almost always on crutches, and they need rehabilitation because the ligaments that give the stability of the joint are in essence gone. A severe sprain may take the better part of 4-6 weeks to heal completely, with the person on crutches for 2-3 weeks of that time, and then probably another week or so to get a normal walking gait back (i.e. not limp).

If you type in grade 3 ankle sprains on google image search, you should be able to see some good pictures.

Again, nanomail me with any more questions. Hope this helps!

----------

*Some people run marathons, and I am no different, except that the mental challenge of pushing myself to the limit is heard through the clicking of fingers on a keyboard instead of the patter of shoes on pavement.*

According to my paperwork, healing is 3 to 6 weeks.

I couldn't put any weight on it at all for the last four days, but today, I've been able to put a litle on there. I haven't need much pain medication today, just a little lortab. I was given two prescriptions, one for 15 lortab, one for a bottle of 800 mg ibuprofen, and I've not even used them both. I hate painkillers, they make me loopy. I am currently on crutches, and using an air splint (kinda like a brace, can be removed. I haven't worn it today.)

I was trick or treating with my doctor last Saturday, and fell afoul of a pothole. My foot is about twice its normal size, and I've also got some small chip fractures in the foot itself. It hurt like hell, but I could move it a tiny litle bit.

If you want any details, feel free to send me a PM about it (I lose things in the forum).

----------

Heather Dudley
Forums Moderator
Liquid Story Binder, on sale for 50% off during November!
A Dragon Writes

I've sprained my ankle loads of times and it takes me, depending how bad on the sprain, longest was a week before I could walk with no brace, no limp at all. The best way to treat it would be to elevate it so that it won't swell so much. Also, to put ice on it. The elevation will make it so less blood stays there and pools to create the swell.
I never once took pain medication... I tended to even run on my sprained ankle if it was only slightly sprained. No pain, no gain idea. But it usually backfired for it getting worse later. I tend to have a really high pain endurance level.. so.. I don't know.

Hope this helps a little. ^^;

----------

NaNo'08 ---- "Keeping Sanity" -------- Fantasy ------- 52,562 Words --- WON!
NaNo'09 ---- "Love in Death" ------- Romance ----- - ? - Words --- -?-

When I sprained my ankle, I basically stretched a ligament that shouldn't have been stretched, so it swelled, and it hurt, but I didn't need to limp. I was supposed to be on crutches for 10 days, but I got sick of them after 1 day, so I limped around for 9 more days. I limped because I knew I shouldn't have been putting weight on it. I had a brace to keep my ankle from rolling again and causing the ligament to stretch. The swelling lasted about three days.

Little tip, when playing laser tag, careful on the ramps. :D

----------

Depends on how badly the ankle is sprained. I've sprained ankles probably a hundred times in my short life. The worst, I was on crutches for three weeks with no weight bearing, moved to partial weight bearing for another couple of weeks before I ditched the crutches altogether and it was still probably 2-3 weeks before I completely lost my limp.

Most of the time, I've not used crutches at all. I've walked with a noticeable limp for 3-5 days and walked in a way that felt funny and tentative to me, but other people didn't notice for another couple of days after that.

One important thing to note is that the ankle will probably feel almost completely better days and days before a doctor says you should stop wrapping it (or using a brace for a more severe sprain) and quite possibly even days and days before you're supposed to be walking on it if you have a more severe sprain. Those recommendations are important, though, one reason that I've had so many sprains is that I routinely stopped using the ankle support and crutches before my doctor said it was okay. Nothing is quite right in my ankle anymore. I'm told that there are surgeries that can fix this, or I could probably get almost full recovery by wearing a brace for a year, but I haven't done it, so even a minor fall usually results in a moderate sprain for me, and worst of all I still usually ignore how long the doctor says to stay off of it, or to wrap it.

As for pain medication, if the sprain was bad enough to send you to the ER (usually because you think you may have broken something) you'll probably get Tylenol-3 or the equivalent (300 mg of Acetaminophen, 15 mg of caffeine and 30 mg of codeine) or Vicodin (acetaminophen plus hydrocodone). A sprain can actually hurt much worse than a break in the early phases. Very rarely I've been sent home with a prescription for one of these drugs (almost never for more than 5 days following the injury). More often than not, I've been given a dose of Tylenol-3 in the ER and then sent home with instructions to take Tylenol for pain. From the really bad sprain, I was sent home with a prescription for Vicodin for ten days. If you still feel like your level of pain is bad enough to need something stronger than OTC meds after that, then chances are a doctor is going to want to see you again, just to make certain that they didn't miss a break on the x-ray (it happens) and you don't have tendon or ligament damage that will require surgery.

Cyanosissaur's post reminded me that I have a few photos of last year's sprain, taken on the evening of the day it happened. It looked worse the next morning with another line of bruising going horizontally across the base of the toes, but I didn't think of taking photos then (was more busy hopping on my good foot and cursing because it hurt). Here's a choice pair.

http://gardenherb.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/dsc00298.jpg
http://gardenherb.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/dsc00302.jpg

----------

“You’re the ‘god’ here. Why are you worrying about questions?”

http://evilnovel.wordpress.com
http://worldsofmint.wordpress.com