Lightbulbs, Vanity & Saying Goodbye

You know those lightbulb jokes people crack? Ya know -- the ones that go "how many blah da blahs does it take to change a lightbulb?"

Well, the ultimate question is how many health professionals does it take to diagnose a hurt ankle?

I can tell you. It's five.

My ankle was still giving me problems last week, so I called the Tech doctor's to see if I could get a third opinion on my ankle.

I headed to the doctor Tuesday morning with a little bit of apprehension. I was unsure if the doctor would support one of the theories I heard before, completely disapprove or simply come up with something else.

The doctor I saw was dismissive at first -- we'll call her Dr. A. She told me I must have just twisted my ankle but simply can't remember it. She told me it wasn't a big deal, and that I'd be fine in 6 or 8 weeks. In fact, she said, I didn't even need to wear a brace -- it'd get better on it's own. It wasn't until after I had explained it had already been 6 or 8 weeks that she decided maybe she should listen a little more.

So Dr. A consulted with the sports medicine doctors and they ordered x-rays just in case I had a stress fracture.

I got x-rayed.

No stress fracture. (whew!)

Dr. A told me I should make another appointment to come back later in the week to see the sports medicine specialists.

And now here we are Thursday afternoon at home post doctor. This is what happened:

We'll call the first doctor of today Dr. B. I explained to Dr. B what the athletic trainer, physical therapist and doctor had said before. He listened. And then he poked around my ankle, asking a million times what hurt and what didn't hurt. Then he asked if I could remember doing anything while exercising? Anything? Heels maybe?

H: Well, yeah, I wear heels.

Dr. B: Like really high heels?

H: Ha! Yeah, like really, really high heels.

Shoot. Goodbye vanity and beautiful shoes. I won't be needing you anymore.

Dr. B explained that when your foot is pointing down in the position necessary to wear heels, your ankle becomes more vulnerable to injury. So more than likely, he said, I was wearing heels and moved my foot just a little off and hurt my ankle.

A grade 1.5 or 2 sprain, he said, but he wanted to check with his team first (yeah...that's right. I have a team).

Enter Dr. C.

After poking around my ankle and touching some quite painful spots, Dr. C told me it was strange my sprain hadn't healed on it's own this far, and the next step should be physical therapy or to at least do exercises on my own. He gave me a list of exercises and instructions, including to wear my brace, stay off my ankle and to ice it, and if that didn't work, I was to come back for a shot in my ankle and we'd go from there.

Many thanks to my health professional team including my sports trainer, physical therapist, Dr. A, Dr. B and Dr. C. I couldn't have done it without you.

Outrageous heels I won't be wearing anymore. Darn ankle.

And to my beautiful high heels...until we meet again, if ever.


Always,