The Ankle Saga Continues

The cast didn’t work.

A few weekends ago, Brian and I went to see the Bodies exhibit, sans kids. Yes, it was heaven (with dead bodies!), and my ankle felt pretty good. The next day I drove an hour and a half to a baby shower, sat and stuffed myself with yummy treats for a few hours, then drove home. By Sunday night my ankle felt like it did when the pain started. In other words, ouch.

By the time I went to the orthopedist last Friday, my ankle hurt every time I took a step. The cast just aggravated it. Kind of like how the staff at my orthopedist’s office affected me. They sent me to the wrong location for two of my four appointments, without apology. ("Well, I don't know what to tell you.") Friday, they topped themselves by calling to ask that I come in at 10 am instead of 11 am, which I did, so I could sit in the waiting room for an hour and see the doctor at… you guessed it… 11 am. So fun! Especially with a two year old to entertain!

All the waiting just to have the doctor tell me he’s never seen anything like this before, has no idea why it’s inflamed after two months of rest/advil/ice and then immobilization, and he cannot help me. He did recommend me to someone else, who I see in a few hours. God, I hope he can fix my ankle. This sucks.

If I sound like I’m feeling sorry for myself, you are 100 percent correct. But I’ll say this: I will never take exercise for granted again. So many people have diseases that keep them from exercising. Believe me, I’ve been Googling, and scaring the shit out of myself.

How hard it must be to listen to all the experts say again and again how exercising increases physical and mental health. And all the people who can’t do it for health reasons say “What about me? I can’t exercise. What do I do?”

Speaking of scary illnesses, I Googled myself into the hospital last Monday. At WrongDiagnosis.com, I discovered that leg/ankle pain can be caused by deep vein thrombosis, which is essentially a blood clot. DVT can cause death by pulmonary embolism, a leading cause of death in healthy young people and the third leading cause of death in the country. So, I told Brian, in case I died through the night, to just remember that I love him. Then I called my regular doctor in the morning to make sure I’d been evaluated for DVT.

The nurse assured me that the MRI would have caught that. Then she called 15 minutes later to say that, no, it wouldn’t have, and I should come in. By 2 that afternoon I was at Beverly Hospital having a vascular ultrasound, which came up negative. I was relieved, but I’ll say what I always end up saying when dealing with health care professionals: Why did I have to think of that?

If you have a minute, will you please send some prayers up for my ankle? Thank you. A few more months without exercise and I'll need a Prozac prescription. And bigger pants.