Modified Brostrom (1)

I've just about had it with crutches.

Don't ever take your ankles for granted. Seriously, you rely on them more than you realise: walking, running, cycling, swimming, climbing, and snowboarding. Believe me, even taking a cup of tea from one room to another is a major undertaking on axilla crutches (tip: flask and backpack).

No doubt many of you are aware of the ongoing saga of my right ankle. Sprained often in childhood, once badly playing squash 8 years ago, and then properly knackered in November 2008 on a midweek Beamish Oddsox mountain bike night-ride.

Instant nausea at the time of the injury (embarrassingly but luckily only 200m into the ride) gave me a clue this was a more substantial injury. After a couple of hours of rest, ice, and elevation, I struggled to remove the mud-caked gore-tex sock. And as soon as I did, my ankle visibly swelled to the size of a melon in front of my eyes. "Yikes!" I thought.

Mrs Doubleu was preparing a presentation for work the following morning and thus not best pleased at my request for a lift to A&E. Needless to say, said A&E was full of Mrs Doubleu's least favourite patient demographic: drunken, vomiting, teenage girls. Despite the retching, Mrs Doubleu admirably soldiered on, preparing her talk on her laptop at a safe distance from the spew, whilst I had X-rays and painkillers.

The X-rays showed "no bony abnormality." I couldn't believe this, given the pain and swelling, so I asked the casualty junior if he could have my films checked by the registrar on duty as I was "a GP and everything". Now in all likelihood, he went for a cup of coffee, then came back and told me they'd been checked and were fine, but hey, I felt better about it all.

So when it didn't settle down, I had physio. I had a week's boarding in Whistler to get through. It did seem perverse though, to be icing the bastard after a morning in the snow. But the thing just didn't settle, no matter how much I tried to convince myself it was slowly getting better. It plateaued by May, by which time I could cycle on the road and pay for it with a day of swelling. Running, climbing, boarding and mountain biking had much steeper payments.

To be continued...