I know this has been covered a lot lately, but having had a search around this site and UKC I've not found much that I'm not doing already. Here's the deal:
just over 6 weeks ago I fell off a wet topout in font (on the second day of my trip there
). By all accounts I'd cracked the bone that caps over the outside of my right ankle and torn all the ligaments on the outside half of my talus out of their insertions, bringing a few small dinnerplate shaped bits of bone out with them. Got put in plaster while still in France, then got one of those Aircast efforts once i was back in the UK. I'm now out of the cast, off crutches and getting physio.
The problem is, I've lost a huge amount of mobility, it's still huge and mis-shapen and certain (pretty vital) movements really hurt. The two that worry me most at present are bringing my knee forward over my toes (injured leg I can just manage this with support from a wall, but it hurts to buggery. With the healthy leg I can put my foot flat on the floor over 6 inches from the wall and bring my knee forward until it touches it, keeping my heel on the floor). The second is pushing up onto my toes (eg when climbing stairs). I can perform this movement (with some pain, but tolerable) with a little weight on my injured leg, but can't push forward from my toes when walking or going up steps.
The pain always seems to come from the same areas (quelle surprise) - in front of the bony bit on the outside of my ankle over onto the top outside of my foot and behind the bony bit on the inside of my ankle. Not surprisingly, these are the areas that are swollen. The pain is always much worse in the morning, to the point where I can't walk without a heavy limp and lots of pain.
At the moment, I'm doing contrast baths, taking arnica and sometimes using a crutch to help me hold good form when I'm walking. In terms of exercises, I'm pointing my toes/bringing them up towards me, tilting my foot side to side, rotating my ankle, writing the alphabet in the air, pulling my toes up with a towel to stretch my calf, raising the inside and outside of my foot alternately, leaning forward over my injured foot to bring my knee over my toes, doing raises up onto my toes and several warm up type stretches. All of these are done religiously each evening over about an hour. I'm also walking as much and as normally as possible - about 4 miles round trip to work and mooching about while I'm there. I've been doing all this for about a week and it's only feeling worse
. I've not got another physio appointment until next Monday, but if the exercises I'm doing aren't effective or could be counterproductive I don't want to spend another 9 days not getting anywhere before finding out what I should be doing.
So, any of you medical/physio/injured types know any other exercises/treatments that might help me out?
Also, anybody care to hazard a guess as to whether it will be able to handle a trip to the Alps by August?
And finally, ideas for staying fit (aerobically) without beating on my ankle too much - swimming, getting on the bike? Or will these fuck me up worse?
Any advice appreciated. Thanks in advance y'all.
