And no, I’m not about to launch into some kind of self-indulgent teenage song lyrics (is there any other kind of teenage song lyrics?). My heart isn’t broken, and thank you, I’m over all the nasty stuff that happened in high school. None of it was actually nasty, I was just there with a bunch of teenagers and you know what they’re like.
What I got goin’ on is the traditional, hurty pain that you get when some of your bits are broken or damaged or angry at you for daring to go out and have a bit of a run around after four years of not. “Take that!” my injured bits are saying to me. And I am. Taking it. For four weeks now.
It’s been interesting as the pain has changed from something deep within the joint: something dull and nebulous that I couldn’t quite point to but that made me feel almost nauseous, to something sharp and articulate like wearing an anklet of thorns.
There are a few tried and trusted ways of coping with pain like this.
- Painkillers. Anything codeine based seems to do the trick for me, though they never completely mask the pain. I mean, it’s an ankle: the pills go into my stomach but the ankle is all the way down there, so far away. I’d prefer having the edge taken off than no relief at all. And I may joke about it but I never mix them with alcohol.
- Not minding that it hurts. Not as silly as it sounds. The very reason the painkillers don’t work–that the ankle is so remote and distant–also enables me to somehow distance myself from the pain, and observe it as an impartial observer. Like looking at the sun and saying “gosh, that’s bright”, I’m able to look all the way down there at my foot and say “fuck, that’s painful” and just treat it as an arbitrary sensation. It’s very zen and detached, I know. But that’s just how cool I am, I guess.
- Other distractions. Work is actually good, when you can get into the swing of things and keep the painful bits relatively still. Lying in bed doing nothing on the other hand… not so easy to ignore it. I might try reading a book later and see if that helps it go away.
- Sex. Hoping to report on this as a method of pain relief sometime in the hopefully-not-too-distant future.
But it’s all fun and games really. I’ve been seeing some lovely doctors, such as my podiatrist. Now, I’m not covered for podiatry; I usually only go twice a year so it’s not really worth the extra in health insurance just to have her re-cover my orthotics. But now I’ve been going a bit more regularly I had to rethink it. And of course, if I were to get a whole new set of orthotics it would actually be cheaper to pay for it outright than it would to pay the extra premium —and I wouldn’t be able to claim the new ones for a year. Gotta love insurance.
Next week I’m booked into a foot/ankle specialist. Someone new. I get to tell another person the whole story and don’t we all love talking about ourselves?
But I’m going to be pleading with him to inject some cortisone into my joint. Now, I know that’s not a very long-term solution but while I’m working out what that might be, I just need some relief in the short term. Because it hurts.
And, for better comfort, I had to wear sneakers to work today and consequently I look like a bit of a dick.
Tags: ankle, injury, pain, painkillers, volleyball