Ankles
Soooooooo (rubs eyes, yawns, blinks hard, stretches arms etc), where was I? When I last posted, I was roughly three months into my rehab, and golly, ain't it just been a long and windin' road since then? The usual rehab period for an ACL reconstruction, for those stupid enough to want to play football again, is about nine months. And I was right on course...
After endless months of gyms, swimming pools, wobble boards, lunges, and hamstring catches, I was ready. In September (this is still in 2007, for those who like to know where there are, year-wise) I started a bit of the ol' pass-and-move, on-me-ed-son, hoof-it-to-row-Z, ankle-kickin' five-a-side. I might even have scored the odd screamer, and looked forward (eagerly, like a hyperactive dribbling dog) to the day when my amateur football career could be brought back from the dead.
Except... After a few weeks or so of the aforementioned silky football, I felt something in my ankle. Something wrong. Like something bad was lodged in there, and was pressing down on all the tendons or muscles or fleshy-bits or something. It made it hurt to kick, run, and do all the other things people associate with running around and kicking footballs in the Oxford City FA RT Harris League Division 1 on a Saturday afternoon.
Oh dear, I thought. Back to square one. Or at best, square three. Maybe square four, if I was lucky. So began a new round of doctors, appointments, waitings, queues, scans, letters, X-rays, diagnoses, more waiting, and a whole load of sitting around on my fat arse, very much not playing football.
It seemed that I had bone spurs (alas, no other cowboy paraphernalia) in my ankle, floating around and causing a general nuisance. Cricket fans among you will note that this is the same injury as suffered by dear ol Fred, bringing my unwanted collection of injuries-of-the-rich-and-famous to two (alas, I've yet to find a sports star who has broken their big toe doing a teenage 'stage dive' off a bed, but the search is still on).
A note here for my GP. Most of the time, I love my GP. Her motherly ways have soothed many an ailment. But on this occasion, when I asked whether I could have bone spurs (having done a little a bit of research, and been pointed in this direction by Gem 'ankles' de Silva), she pretty much told me that it was impossible. She actually huffed, with you're-totally-wasting-my-time eyes, that only really old ladies got bone spurs. Verdict? GPs: lovely people, don't always know much about ankles. Worth remembering, I'd say.
So where did all this leave me? Up a football creak without a paddle/ankle. All I could do was wait, for the X ray to show that I had bone spurs, and then the follow-up appointment to tell me I needed a scan, and then the scan to show that I really did have bone spurs, and then the follow-up appointment to confirm that, can you believe it, I have bone spurs, and then, finally, the small operation to remove the bone spurs.
And all that waiting brought me up to June 2008. Over two years since my last game (scroll down to 'that's entertainment') for the Street...
After endless months of gyms, swimming pools, wobble boards, lunges, and hamstring catches, I was ready. In September (this is still in 2007, for those who like to know where there are, year-wise) I started a bit of the ol' pass-and-move, on-me-ed-son, hoof-it-to-row-Z, ankle-kickin' five-a-side. I might even have scored the odd screamer, and looked forward (eagerly, like a hyperactive dribbling dog) to the day when my amateur football career could be brought back from the dead.
Except... After a few weeks or so of the aforementioned silky football, I felt something in my ankle. Something wrong. Like something bad was lodged in there, and was pressing down on all the tendons or muscles or fleshy-bits or something. It made it hurt to kick, run, and do all the other things people associate with running around and kicking footballs in the Oxford City FA RT Harris League Division 1 on a Saturday afternoon.
Oh dear, I thought. Back to square one. Or at best, square three. Maybe square four, if I was lucky. So began a new round of doctors, appointments, waitings, queues, scans, letters, X-rays, diagnoses, more waiting, and a whole load of sitting around on my fat arse, very much not playing football.
It seemed that I had bone spurs (alas, no other cowboy paraphernalia) in my ankle, floating around and causing a general nuisance. Cricket fans among you will note that this is the same injury as suffered by dear ol Fred, bringing my unwanted collection of injuries-of-the-rich-and-famous to two (alas, I've yet to find a sports star who has broken their big toe doing a teenage 'stage dive' off a bed, but the search is still on).
A note here for my GP. Most of the time, I love my GP. Her motherly ways have soothed many an ailment. But on this occasion, when I asked whether I could have bone spurs (having done a little a bit of research, and been pointed in this direction by Gem 'ankles' de Silva), she pretty much told me that it was impossible. She actually huffed, with you're-totally-wasting-my-time eyes, that only really old ladies got bone spurs. Verdict? GPs: lovely people, don't always know much about ankles. Worth remembering, I'd say.
So where did all this leave me? Up a football creak without a paddle/ankle. All I could do was wait, for the X ray to show that I had bone spurs, and then the follow-up appointment to tell me I needed a scan, and then the scan to show that I really did have bone spurs, and then the follow-up appointment to confirm that, can you believe it, I have bone spurs, and then, finally, the small operation to remove the bone spurs.
And all that waiting brought me up to June 2008. Over two years since my last game (scroll down to 'that's entertainment') for the Street...
posted by Badger at 4:49 PM
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