Broken Ankle Week 19

I did it! I walked to physical therapy last week and afterwards I walked to the grocery store, managed cane in one hand and basket in the other, and then carried 1 bag of groceries home. I hadn’t walked to the grocery store since before the injury and I don’t drive. It’s amazing to feel more freedom to walk around the neighborhood.

This week’s goal: take the subway to a lunch meeting. I used to take the subway all the time and haven’t yet since injury.

Discomforts:

• When the PT massages over the incision on tibia, there’s a nerve there that hurts when pressed on. I figure/hope that’s something that takes a while to heal.
• If I press on top of my foot, it still tingles in places. It’s almost all back.
• Achilles tendon is sore. I take that as a good sign of waking it up and using it. Same with a little muscle on the outside of my leg.
• The lack of symmetry bothers me a bit and I’m adjusting. With the hardware in it, my left ankle will always be bigger than the right.
• I’m not completely confident being on San Francisco sidewalks without a cane. I feel like I need more confidence in my balance and then I will give up the cane.

Improvements:

• Little to no daily swelling and I put away the cold therapy machine. It has swollen up when it’s used too much and “too much” is an always changing metric.
• Walked to meet friends in the neighborhood TWICE in the past week. I’d been asking friends to come to my house, sit in backyard, because I couldn’t navigate the hilly sidewalks. Now I can!
• I’m anticipating trying on some of my shoes to see if some of them might fit now. I packed them away (so I wouldn’t be looking at them when I couldn’t wear them).
• I started trying single leg toe raises and I can barely do it with the recovering leg. About 2 cm up and down.
• I can stand on my left leg now for 3–4 seconds. I’m holding onto that. I used to stand in tree pose for 1–2 minutes. I will get back to 1–2 minutes.
• At my last physical therapy appointment, I accidentally left my cane there. I was in the elevator and realized I was missing something. I went back and laughed with the physical therapist because she had once told me I would know I improved when I walked out without cane/crutches.