But You Say It's Just A Sprain

A week and a day ago I sprained my ankle.


In the grand scheme of confessional-type blog openings, that seems kind of lame, doesn't it? But it's the truth. And in spraining my ankle, I have had to come to terms with some truths about myself. But first, let me backtrack and briefly (hopefully) explain how it happened.

In my last blog I mentioned a confirmation retreat that I had gone on last weekend. The Spraining (sounds like a new Stephen King novel) happened the day after the high ropes course I wrote about. Our Sunday adventure was to go on a hike, climbing to the top of Thomas Mountain and Cat Mountain near Lake George. I have to admit, I struggled. I struggled to keep up with the much healthier and spry and physically fit youth. I struggled to not just sit down in the middle of the trail and demand they pick me up on their way back down. I struggled to breathe and not drink too much water because there was no way in hell I was peeing in the woods and yet drink enough to keep me hydrated and justify the two full water bottles I had in my daypack. But the view from the top of Cat Mountain was definitely worth it. Then we headed down the trail. After the steep part of the decline where I was sure my knees were going to give out on me, it got easier. Then it happened. I stepped wrong on a rock. I'm still not sure if I slid off the small rock in an odd way or if it was the way my foot landed on it, but I definitely felt a stab of pain in my left ankle. I even said, "Ouch, that didn't feel good." My friend who was walking in front of me turned to make sure I was okay. I took a few steps and the pain subsided, so I assumed things were good. I went down the rest of the trail, got back to the camp we were staying at and took a shower, walked around, chatted with the other adults, and then sat down to read my book while the youth were off playing games and writing up their statements of faith. As I emerged from the world of The Girl Who Played With Fire I noticed my ankle, which was tucked underneath me, was hurting a little. Not unusual if I stay in one position too long, but when I stood up to put my book away I immediately thought "This doesn't feel right." For the next few hours as we got dinner ready and prepared for our evening presentations, every time I stood up and started walking the pain got worse and worse and my limp was so pronounced that my friend pulled me aside and said that if I needed to see a doctor it could be arranged. I brushed it off, figuring I would see how it played out. How bad could it be? I figured I would wait until morning and if it didn't seem to be better then, maybe I would consider seeing a doctor. Another friend volunteered to drive me that night if I needed it. I thanked her and kept limping on my merry way. But finally, I could deny it no more. As I moved in to position for my part of the presentation all I could picture was me waking up in the morning and collapsing on the floor, unable to hold myself up with my left foot. So I broke down and decided to see the doctor.
Of course both of the closest Urgent Care's were closed by then, so it was off to the emergency room. My first visit to the ER (if you don't count the years I watched ER and Grey's Anatomy). The intake nurse very kindly moved up my X-ray (my first X-ray!) so that I wouldn't have to wait until after I got in a room to get it looked at. I'm thinking perhaps when I said I was there on a youth retreat she realized I was probably on a time deadline and needed to get back to the kids ASAP. The hardest thing about the ER? The waiting. Waiting for my X-ray. Waiting for the room. Once in the room, waiting for the nurse to look at my X-ray. Waiting for the PA to come in and assure me it wasn't broken but it was sprained. Waiting for them to bring me Motrin, since moving my foot so it could be X-rayed amped up the pain. Waiting for them to bring me crutches. All told, it seems that in reality the three and a half hours we were there was actually short compared to a lot of ER visits. I just know that I was really happy to get an ace bandage, drugs, and crutches so I could carry on with my life.

Did I say carry on with my life? So, when I was told that I had sprained my ankle, I was also told that if it didn't feel better in five days I should be sure to follow up with a doctor. In my mind, that translated to "You'll be walking normal again in five days!" Did I mention that until this point I had never sprained or broken anything? Ever? Anyway, when I finally started looking at the papers they had given me, you can imagine my surprise when I read that the recovery time could be four to six weeks. WEEKS!!!! And that in the six weeks after a sprain I am much more likely to sprain it again. In fact, for the rest of my life that ankle will be weaker and the potential for another sprain (or even break?) is higher. What the what now?  So basically the past week and a day I have barely left my apartment, barely left the couch. By Tuesday I was hobbling around the apartment, but I could feel the weakness in my ankle, even with an ace bandage on. I live on the second floor with a lot of stairs, so even the task of going down to catch my Uber so I could go to rehearsal was a strain. Exhausting. Did I also mention that I am very much out of shape? What didn't help was that all the muscles that were sore from the high ropes course and the hike seemed to be the same muscles I was using to crutch my way about. Needless to say, there were a couple days of pain not centered in my ankle.

By Friday, I felt well enough to leave the apartment without my crutches. Up until then I would hobble around my tiny studio apartment without them, but whenever I left the apartment I would crutch it. I wanted to be careful to not push my ankle until it was ready. But Friday, I woke up feeling good. I was going to my sister's, she was going to help me with some laundry, I had friends coming over for Game Night.... it was a good day! I made it downstairs without falling (yay!!!!). But somewhere between hobbling around my sister's and going in to CVS, what I should have realized as the inevitable happened. My ankle had enough. Throughout the week any time I started to push it, the ankle would send twinges of pain to remind me to elevate and take it easy. This was different. It was constant. Luckily, the Motrin helped. But I spent the next day laying on the couch, in a funk for the rest of the weekend. And I had time to analyze myself.


See, I consider myself a strong independent woman. I live alone. I do what I want when I want. I don't think twice about walking two miles to go to a class I audit, to walk just over that distance home from rehearsal. It never occurs to me that I can't walk to the corner for a cup of coffee if I need to get out of the apartment. Now, all of a sudden, I'm thinking "Okay, if I get up to pee now I can start my cup of coffee on the way and it will be done when I get out of the bathroom and do I want something to eat because I better grab it while I'm in the kitchen area and oh shoot my phone needs to charge so I better grab that." You get the idea. Instead of not thinking about it and just hopping up and down and all around to do what I need when I need to do it, I needed to make a plan. Now, normally I love plans and lists and schedules. But this was different. This wasn't making a plan because I wanted to, it was making a plan because I needed to. I felt like I couldn't really leave the apartment. Where would I go? If you've never tried to crutch your way a few hundred feet down the sidewalk, you don't understand where I'm coming from. Plus, once I crutch somewhere I'm stuck there. I can't carry my cup of coffee home. And have you ever tried to rehearse a play where your character is pretty active and all of a sudden you can't really move? Not fun. Not good for character development, even if your director is very understanding, perhaps more than you are. I had good intentions of kicking my more-off-again-than-on-again yoga practice off for real this week. Most importantly, I realized how much I hate feeling weak. How much I hate asking for help. Many people offered, so it's not that. But I couldn't bring myself to ask. Not even of my family. I hate feeling like a burden, and to ask someone to take me grocery shopping or do my laundry, even the fact that I wished I lived with someone who could bring me water or lunch when I needed it.... well, it was hard to deal with. It wasn't just that I felt physically weak, but it was making me feel emotionally and mentally weak as well. I've taught myself to rely heavily on me. There have been a lot of times when I've asked for help, even with little things, and the people I've asked have said no. At times they had valid reasons, but it still doesn't exactly make you want to keep reaching out, you know? So I make do, find a way to do it on my own. And now that wasn't always an option. When my friends were over Friday night and I was hobbling around the apartment they kept offering to help and I kept saying no. My justification? If they weren't over I would have to do it on my own anyway. So see, even when someone is right there offering, and all I have to do is say yes, I still say no. It's not fun to be faced with your own stubbornness and to know that being a "strong independent woman" may just hurt you at the end of the day. I also realized how much of my self-worth was tied up in my body. Like I've said, I'm not necessarily physically fit, but generally my body does what I want it to when I want it to . It treats me pretty good and I do my best to treat it pretty good. But now it was letting me down. It had failed me. And my choices of what to do and where to go were taken from me. I found myself by Sunday night saying "I'm so tired of just sitting on the couch watching TV." And I found myself in a downward spiral all weekend. Not being able to walk was now adding to any and every self-deprecating thought I had been having about myself. I would never find a job and I would run out of money and where would I go and why doesn't anybody want to hire me and obviously you have no friends because nobody's texting you to see how you are don't they realize you're stuck and you need help or just someone to talk to and of course you're alone you'll always be alone what man would want you with your bum ankle and no job and shoot you can't even go anywhere because you don't drive and now your Hallmark Movies Now app on your Blu-ray player won't work because see you don't even deserve to watch stupid cheesy Hallmark movies and..... Well, you get the idea.

So yeah, this past week and one day have been a struggle. But I think today is a good day. I worried I overdid it last night in rehearsal, but the ankle is feeling good. Stronger. I may even attempt to hobble to the bus stop instead of crutch it. I will ask someone to take me grocery shopping and keep asking people until someone says yes. Or splurge and have my groceries delivered. I'm not ready for the coffee shop trip yet, but maybe I'll make a coffee date with someone for the weekend, give myself motivation to get out of the apartment. I'll keep applying for jobs. I'll keep listening to my body as it heals and know that it won't be long before I am able to be back to normal. And when those self-defeating thoughts crop up, I will tell them to shut the fuck up. Being strong doesn't mean that I don't ever feel weak. I can acknowledge the weakness and know that it's temporary. I don't need to wallow in it and I can't let it win.  I know I need to work on asking for help, and to know that I shouldn't stop relying on others. Take the help when it's offered. It doesn't make me less of a person to lean on others. And maybe, once in a while, I need someone to tell me to shut the fuck up. Even if that someone is me.

Life Lessons From a High Ropes Course

There are times in life when God decides to show you something or teach you something, although you're not aware of it at the time. You go through the event, blissfully unaware that later when you take time to reflect on it you will realize God was poking you in the forehead saying "Pay attention!" That's what happened to me this past weekend when I traveled four hours from home to the gorgeous Adirondacks to help chaperone a Confirmation Retreat.

Our big event of Saturday was a high ropes course. I had not done anything like this since I was in college doing Orientation Leader teambuilding, and all I really remembered was being terrified and clinging to every available tree I could. Surprisingly, I was really excited for the chance to get to do this again. And then I was in the trees. Yes, we are wearing harnesses and carabineers keep us safely attached to cable so that if we slip and fall we will not plummet to the ground. But still, when you are up working your way through the challenges, it is easy to only have one thought in your head: please don't fall. Instinct seems to kick in and you almost forget that you are actually safe. In the first couple of courses there are places where you have an option to remove yourself from the course and be done. After one or two particularly rough challenges, I found myself standing on a platform with two options. I could travel the cable down and off the course, or I could keep going. So I stood there. I kept looking at Option 1, the safe option. I had made a good stab at high ropes, nobody would think less of me if I opted out. I looked at the challenges just ahead of me. They looked.....hard. A little scary. I was standing there so long that I let one or two people go ahead of me while I wrestled with this decision. Finally, I realized I had been standing there too long. A decision needed to be made. I looked at our youth flying through the course, laughing as they made their way through the challenges and I told myself "If the kids can do it, so can I." So I took a deep breath, and moved ahead with the ropes course.

Later that night I took a few minutes to sit quietly by myself writing in my journal, something I like to do either first thing in the morning or just before bed. I found myself writing about what I had done that day and it was like God smacked me upside the head. Here was a life lesson! How many times in life are we faced with a decision or a challenge where we have to weigh our options? We can go with a known or safer option, one that falls within our comfort zone or one where we know what the outcome will be. Or we can push ourselves. We see a scary option, full of unknowns, one that we know will challenge us and take us to the edge of or beyond our comfort zone. Which do we choose? There's nothing wrong with either. But I know I was happier with the scary option. I challenged myself. Sure, at one point I needed my friend to come back out on a challenge when I got stuck and help me to the platform. ("No Summer left behind" he said.) Even that was a lesson, because I am not one who likes to ask for help. I'm an independent woman, I can do it on my own! But I pushed myself, did things that I wouldn't normally do, and it was great. How many times do I do that in life? How many times am I faced with a path that leads to the scary, the unknown, the potential for failure, and I back away? How many times do I sit back instead of pushing myself? Even more important, when I do take the unknown, how many times do I end up happy I did?

I hope that the next time I'm faced with a life decision, I am brave enough to go with the road less taken, the one where I can't see the outcome, the one that might be a little scary. I hope that you do the same thing also. Take a chance. It so very often is worth it.