Saturday 15 February 2014

What I learnt when I broke my foot

When you break a bone in your foot the hospital tends to put you in a cast and let you get on with it so I thought I'd list the things I learnt from the experience.


1     If you turn your ankle over it is possible to put all your weight on one point on the side of your foot.  If you are carrying something heavy, such as a grandson in a car seat, this may be enough to break the bone. As my bone density had recently been checked, because of my steroid intake, and found to be OK this could happen to anyone.

2     It is possible to move around for a couple of weeks with a broken foot before you go to hospital to have it checked.



3    You can learn a lot from books.  There's a passage in the book Touching the Void where one of the climbers tells the other he has probably broken his ankle (as well as his leg) as there were red streaks coming out from round the bruise; when I saw that on my foot that may have been the time to get it checked out.

4     When your foot and ankle are held rigid in plaster cramp in the calf muscle is agony.  You can't stretch the cramp away so just have to keep massaging the muscle until it returns to the right shape.

5    When you have a cast you can walk on you may not be able to use it outside as well as indoors without serious damage to your health.  My wife would have killed me if I'd trodden dirt into the new carpets.

6     When you walk with one foot in a cast it means you have one leg about 2" longer than the other. This twists your pelvis into a different position which can give you pain in both hips and your lower back for a couple of weeks.

7     How far you can 'walk' on crutches may be limited by pain in the hip of your good leg.

8     When you are finally free of the cast your pelvis will twist back to its normal position causing more aches and pains.