Sprained!

Last week I sprained my foot. It wasn't glamorous or heroic. I just fell down the stairs. Here are the (not so) gory details for your afternoon reading pleasure!

It all started with a headache. For almost the entire month of June I had been feeling really weak all the time-- always run-down, exhausted and tired, with no real strength to speak of. It started to get worse toward the end of the month, and I couldn't figure out what the deal was-- I tried to pin down when it began, and I noticed it was about 3 weeks into a new workout regime.

At one point I asked around and found out I had been doing way too much, so I took a week-long break and I really started to feel better... But when I started exercising again, albeit much less frequently and intensely, the exhaustion came back immediately! I was frustrated and figured it was something else so I kept working out, and kept getting progressively more tired and started feeling really sick all the time (I remember laying in bed one morning and feeling like I had been poisoned!).

Then last Sunday I was supposed to go to a prayer meeting after church before helping some friends move. I skipped the prayer meeting in favor of a little rest (don't judge me), but as I was leaving my apartment to meet my friends, my head was still light and foggy. I was slowly making my way down the stairs when all of a sudden my left ankle buckled, twisted and I fell, crushing my foot beneath me and sliding down several stairs on my right shin. Quickly, I grabbed the railing right before it turned into a full-on, head over heels tumble down the entire flight of stairs.

I sat there for several minutes feeling the pain starting to pulse through my foot, completely unsure of what to do. I lifted the right leg of my jeans to reveal some deep scrapes that were pooling with blood on my shin, and that's when I started to cry. I've never broken or sprained anything before, so I just sat there alone on my apartment stairs, holding my foot and thinking, "I don't know any of my neighbors... I live alone. Where ARE my neighbors? What is the protocol on this? Is that scrape going to scar? I don't want MORE scars on my legs!! ...Waaaah!!"

After whimpering and quietly howling for a few minutes I got up and limped back to my apartment where I peeled off my jeans and went to make an ice pack for my foot and leg. (As I poured the ice cubes into the plastic bag I kept saying, "Oh Lord PLEASE don't let my foot be broken! PLEASE don't let my foot be broken!!") I started to feel overwhelmingly like I was about to throw up, so I grabbed the bag of ice and a pack of frozen sausages, and hobbled quickly to the bathroom. I laid down on the floor next to the toilet and unsuccessfully tried to get ahold of my dad and a med-student friend of mine (holla, emoss!). I finally got ahold of another friend who was out of town, who quickly told me that she would find someone to come take care of me.

As I was laying there on the phone, tailbone pressing uncomfortably into the cold, stony tile of my bathroom floor, all of a sudden every inch of my body started to tingle and I felt all the strength drain out of my body. About twenty minutes later, the adrenaline fog momentarily cleared and I realized that someone was about to find me laying next to the toilet in my underwear with a Ziploc bag full of ice cubes and a package of chicken andouille sausages on my leg.

Gingerly I got up and reached into my hamper for a pair of cropped sweatpants right as my friend Stephanie showed up with a real ice pack and took amazing care of me for the rest of the evening... She looked up foot sprain care information on the internet, brought me water and painkillers, and even went out and bought me some chocolate pudding! What more could a sick girl want?


Chicken andouille sausage is way better as lunch than as a cold compress. Just for the record.

The next day I went to the doctor and she confirmed that it was just a sprain, and ran some blood work to see about the weakness that caused this whole debacle. Apparently everything is totally fine (except I have a slightly elevated bilirubin-- weird!). I think it may have to do with my body still needing to recover from the overtraining I did, so I've been keeping a very strict eating schedule all this week, making sure I'm getting enough protein at every meal, and I'm feeling WORLDS better.

So now I'm just sitting here, finally with the mental fortitude to explain the whole shebang, and all I have to figure out now is how long it'll be until I can strap on my four inch heels again.