Recovering from injury

[quixoticgeek]

So last week I sprained my ankle. Did I do this climbing the North face of Ben Nevis? Running the 3 peaks in a record time? No, I did it on dodgy paving opposite the station on the way home from the smoke...


It's been 9 days now and whilst most of the swelling has gone down, and the bruising is starting to fade, it still hurts, and I'm still using a crutch to hobble about.


Obviously this is not ideal and I really want to get out on the trail again as soon as I can, being stuck indoors is doing my nut. But at the same time I don't want to do too much too soon and make recovery longer than it has to be.


With this in mind, does anyone have any recommendations on recovering from a nasty sprained ankle and getting back up to mountain fitness?


Thanks


J

[alewife]

Sorry to hear about your injury. From my personal experience in 2008, you can't rush recovery of a sprained ankle. I won't tell you how long mine was out of action, because you sound fed up enough. Rest, raising your ankle as often as you can, a cold pack to reduce swelling, and a compression support seemed to be the advice back then. I think once all swelling and healing of tissue takes place you can gently exercise -I used to swim to help mine, then gradually built up to walking. I'm not a medic so only going by what I remember, so there may be more modern advice that will help. Hopefully yours is not too bad.

[quixoticgeek]

Sorry to hear about your injury. From my personal experience in 2008, you can't rush recovery of a sprained ankle. I won't tell you how long mine was out of action, because you sound fed up enough. Rest, raising your ankle as often as you can, a cold pack to reduce swelling, and a compression support seemed to be the advice back then. I think once all swelling and healing of tissue takes place you can gently exercise -I used to swim to help mine, then gradually built up to walking. I'm not a medic so only going by what I remember, so there may be more modern advice that will help. Hopefully yours is not too bad.

I'm hoping to get into physio in the next week, as well as swimming and cycling (for the cardio).


Yeah I'm expecting this to be a slow recovering. I'm hoping months rather than years. I've got a walking trip in the alps booked for 250 days time... Gonna be a long journey...


J