How to Properly Break Your Ankle: Day 55

Today was all about the visit to the doctor. It's been about two months since the incident when I broke my ankle, let's recap on how it all went down -with some added bonus information.

How to Properly Break Your Ankle: The Amy Anderson Way

Step 1: Go bouldering with friends.

Step 2: When it's your turn, first be sure to fake your fight with gravity. Then have a real competition, see who wins. Also, be sure only one part of you misses the crash pad and listen for the snap when you land.

     To deviate for just a moment, I did not just break one part of my fibula, I        broke two parts of it.

          The first, larger break, was fixed easily once the screws were inserted.

          But the second, smaller break (as circled in both x-ray photos) is the                 special one. When you break your fibula, there are two different ways               to break it. The 'normal' way and the 'other' (or Amy Anderson) way.
               The normal way leaves your fibula broken at an angle -there's a                        doctor term for an angled fracture but I am no doctor, I think it                        starts with an 'o.'
               The Amy Anderson way is when you break your fibula with a                            perpendicular fracture (again, not a doctor term.) The boring part                      about a perpendicular fracture is that it takes your bone longer to                      heal because there is less surface area for it to heal to.

And I thought that was a dust fleck...

Step 3: Once the paramedics arrive, make life easier on yourself and have them remove the shoe on your foot for you.

Step 4: Once in the hospital, just kind of hang out and wait for your doctor to set your ankle so it doesn't look like this anymore:

Step 5: Stay in the hospital an extra day because you're running a fever and try not to go stir crazy.

I'm surprised there were no repercussions for writing on the walls.

Step 6: Fill your time at home with mostly useless activities until you're more mobile.

So bored!

Step 6.5: If you hang out with friends, don't let them pity you. Do your best to convince them you're completely capable ... then fall right in front of them.

Step 7: Go to your doctor for a check up around two months after the incident and learn that because you just had to be different, you get to be on crutches and in a boot longer.

But it's cool because then you can be buff in one leg and not the other

Booyah!