Ankle Pain

[regis760]

I recently got into a car accident on August 8th,2011. I was told I had a lacerated liver, sprained ankle, and laceration to the skull. They put raps on my legs that squeezed them several times a minute to prevent blood clotting, which hurt so bad I could barely even think straight, despite the effects of the medication they were giving me. After two days of being in the hospital, my dad insisted, seeing me in so much pain, that they do an x ray on my leg to make sure there is no other complications in my leg. They did another x ray, and sure enough, there was a fractured fibula that was being squeezed over and over. A month later after getting out of the hospital, I had a check up with my foot doctor, who did x rays and found out I didnt just have an ankle sprain, but a high ankle sprain where the syndesmosis was torn and needed surgery! (one of the ligaments above the ankle). Coincidentally, the way to check if you potentially have a high ankle sprain is to squeeze the mid calf,and if there is shooting pain down to your ankle, you have a high ankle sprain. So, they were squeezing my injury for 2 days straight, and found my high ankle sprain a whole month and 6 days late. so my foot has been immobilized, apart from me walking on it slightly after my first surgery, which I stopped once I found out I had a high ankle sprain. It was then immobilized for a month and 2 weeks, which after that I had a walking boot and physical therapy. So total immobilization time has been about 2  and a half months, with a month of walking in a walking boot, which obviously restricts movement in the ankle. I got the boot off in November, and have been recieving intense physical therapy to my foot. I still have pain in my ankle when doing simple this like walking, and stiffness when I wake up in the morning and after physical therapy. My ankle also is unstable, to a point where I'll twist my ankle from just walking. It should have gone away by now, but my foot doctor cant find any cartilage build up, or even evidence that my ligament is stretched to show I have ankle instability. Am I going to have this pain forever? Im getting worried.

[regis760]

Hey I appreciate the comment. Maybe I am just being a baby, and I really dont mind pain if its just healing pain, I just dont want to have any sort of permanent damage because I was too stubborn to persue action. Thanks again

[LetMeBe]

Why didn't you ask your doctor what the actual prognoses was for the pain or that type of pain? Everyone is different some people have a high tolerance and don't notice pain while others notice everything. :)  One thing I learned from my surgeries is that the more exercise I did the better things healed as long as it is the proper exercise for your specific problem then pain will probably go away.  Pain is only pain when something is wrong and obviously something is wrong so give yourself time to heal it's your bodies way of saying I'm hurt.  I am not a professional or anything I just have dealt with a lot of surgeries and each one had pain prior to and after so time was what it took and some of the rehab was very painful but better to get it over with than to have pain for a longer period of time.  Usually tendons and other types of sprains are inflamed which causes the pain so things like Ibuprofen help along with hot and cold packs which cause the swelling to go down and hence makes the pain go away.  I also used some of these patches that were made to help my back pain "lidoderm" I think is the proper spelling ... I cut them in to sections and used a little section around where they did my knee surgery which I thought was going to kill me not the surgery itself  ... and amazingly by putting the lidoderm patches around the back and front of my knee I had absolutely no pain at all.  My doctor was a little shocked that I had even thought of it but it did work and I didn't suffer the week or so of pain from having the knee surgery I had. No pain pills no nothing just the patches.  Hope something here helps.