The reason why I am homebound

At exactly 3 weeks ago, As I was on my way home, walking down some flights of stairs from a train station, I missed a couple of steps, my right foot fumbled, twisted my ankle and did a Van Persie head dive onto the ground. Luckily there was an Indian woman who helped me up and assisted me to the taxi stand. The sharp pain from my ankle with surpassed the outright embarrassment! It hurt so bad that I literally bawled my way home and  continued for another hour as I iced the ankle, make a couple of phone calls through my cracked voice and then took a shower. The pain was too unbearable and it swell up like a pig trotter!

I always have pretty strong ankles and I do not get sprains easily even if I twisted my ankle. This time, I knew it was serious. I had to get it x-rayed to put some peace in my mind that it was not something bad.

Even though it was late at night, my dear friend drove over to pick me up and send me to Accident & Emergency department in a hospital. After the x-ray and doctor’s review, I was told that I suffered from lateral malleolus fracture and torn ligament. I know, lateral mallelus fracture sounds like a big word, it essentially means I fractured the end of my fibula bone (it is the outside bone of the ankle joint) on my leg that carry about 10% of the body weight. It is a pretty common type of ankle fracture so it does not require any surgery (phew~) and all I need to do is to let it heal by itself.

At least I was given an option to between a bandage wrap or a hard cast. The thought of putting on a hard cast sucks because I can imagine all the inconvenience and the itch and being uncomfortable will come with that because my skin cannot breathe and get cleaned properly. Eventually I opt for a bandage and was given 7 days of hospitalisation leaves and an appointment to see an orthopaedic a week later. 

After my visit to orthopaedic, my hospitalisation leave was extended by another 4 weeks and I was advised not to put any weight on my right foot and I was wear a cast. Thank goodness it was not those typical hard cast. I call this a transformer cast which is actually an air cast a.k.a boot that I need to wear most of the time except when I am showering and sleeping. Cannot argue with the doctor on that because at least my foot can breathe occasionally so it is still not too bad. 

Here I am already homebound for 3 weeks, 2 more weeks to go! That explains why I am more active than usual on my blog and social media. 

I try my best not to screw up my bio clock, I have to control my diet considering that my body will not burn as much calories as my usual day. I finally caught up on some dramas and interesting documentaries on youtube. I also get to curl up with good reads as I sip on my milk (I need that calcium!) Of course I also had to do some office work from home as well however I realise I have potential to let laziness take over me. I am getting extremely unmotivated.

I have more or less gotten used to the inconvenience. I wheeled myself around the house on an office wheel chair and hopped around the kitchen if I need to make my meals. Being a left-hander, naturally my left leg is always the stronger one, now I trained it to take my own weight upon itself. I manage to find a way to use squat toilet (Yes,  squat toilets! Super retro, that explains how old my flat is!) and I sit on a stool as I shower.  

When I was young, I used to take 2 umbrellas pretending they were my crutches and that I had an injured foot. It is unbelievable that my childhood fantasy came true! Even though I have crutches now, So far I have been out of the house with that on 3 occasions. I dislike venturing out with those because I get pretty tired after a short while and my palm muscles hurt the next day plus I am not good in it, I get wobbly sometimes. I hate the cleaning process that goes along with that when I come back home. I am pretty anal about keeping the crutches and cast clean. The only benefit of moving around with these is that people are actually nicer and more patient with me.  

During this stay home period, I have some lovely friends who came to visit me or are planning to visit me. They brought me some of my food supply and cravings. Now the initial swell has went down but the ankle still looks a little bruised and it still get swollen time to time if I do not keep it elevated. My right leg muscles has all turned soft and evidently smaller! It is on its way to recovery. Praying hard that the next doctor’s visit would be a good news then I will receive some physiotherapy if the x-ray shows a recovered ankle. I cannot wait to walk and run again. After all, I have a beach holiday to look forward to in 5 weeks time! 

P/S: Clearly it was an accident. I was not looking at my phone or anything. I just quickened my steps and I thought I was done with that flight of stairs but apparently not which resulted in the happenings. Thank goodness for insurance! 🙂 

Have you fractured your ankle or get into any sort of injury which made you homebound for a period of time and how long does the whole recovering process take and how you cope with it?