An ankle sprain from running hurts more than a break (IMO)
So I don't know how many of you out there have completely busted your ass while running but I have done it a number of times. One of these times landed me in the hospital where I thought I had rebroken my ankle that I originally broke in 3 places in a motorcycle accident years ago.
Thankfully, it was just a really bad sprain and according to some medical people I know that work as nurses, many times sprains can actually feel more painful than breaks and I am quite certain that was the case with me because I have experienced both and the sprain was MUCH more painful than the break. It was like, impossible to sleep bad and of course they wouldn't offer me any sort of meaningful pain killers so it was something that I just had to deal with and man, those were a tough 5 nights or so of not being able to find any sort of comfortable way to lie in bed.
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For starters, you can go ahead and forget about "manning up" and just dealing with it because I tried that an it aint happening. I have never felt something as perpetually painful as this sprain and of course walking on it or even attempting day by day to put just a little bit of weight on it was agonizing.
For starters, one of my ankles was twice the size of the other and I'm pretty sure I got a really nice calf workout for 5 days because hopping was the only way for me to get around. To make matters worse, when I did finally decide to go to the hospital, I was at that time living in a building with no elevator and on the 4th floor. After crawling on my ass halfway down the stairs and crazy o clock in the morning, I realized that i had forgotten my phone and while I wasn't concerned about not being able to look at social media while at the hospital, getting an Uber is a little difficult without a phone so I had to crawl my butt all the back up and repeat the process.
I was seriously concerned that my ankle was rebroken and was extremely relieved when the x-rays came back negative and got some advice from a doctor on what to do. It wasn't terribly difficult information to digest as a non medical professional, it basically consisted of "resting and not using the foot." Ok, that's what I was going to do anyway but at least I didn't need to have my leg wrapped up like a gordita for 3 months like when I actually did break my ankle.
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If you've never broken a leg I strongly suggest that you never do so. I was completely incapable of doing almost anything for 3 months and even then I went against the doctor's orders and had them cut the cast off of me even though they suggested I wear it for another month. I decided to just be super careful. I had also gained a ton of weight while I was in the cast since almost all of my meals were some sort of delivery. Thankfully, I had insurance and got paid to not be able to work, so all clouds have a silver lining I suppose.
I broke my ankle because of a crash that I think almost anyone would have fallen victim to. I'm not trying to completely absolve myself from accountability but I honestly believe there was nothing I could have done to avoid that accident.
The sprain on the other hand came from me trying to be too much of a hero while trail-running.
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While running along the bank of a ravine, I was trying to be a bit faster than I probably should have, hit some long grass that had a rogue and hidden hole under it, twisted the bejesus out of my ankle and nearly fell into a ravine that almost certainly would have resulted in horrible injury if not death. So I thank my lucky stars that it wasn't worse than it ended up being.
I much prefer trail running to road running but this is one of the literal pitfalls of trail-running. There are far more dangers involved, but I suppose it comes with the territory and is a risk I am willing to take instead of simply running on the side of the road dodging traffic.
Have you ever seriously injured yourself running? I suppose I should count myself lucky that the worst thing I have experienced is a really bad sprain. It did hurt much worse and for far longer than my break did though.