James vs. James's Ankle

Once upon a Tuesday night James went off to play a little basketball with some friends at church.  About 10 pm he arrived home. I heard the door open and then James said, "Hey, Sariah, want to see something cool?" The "something cool" was an extremely swollen right ankle, which James seemed remarkably calm about. He acted like he was ready to just go shower and then to bed. But quickly the adrenaline of the injury wore off and the pain set it, and off to the ER we went.

I know you're all wondering how, specifically, James hurt his ankle. There are two answers to this.

James: "It was roughly the last play of the game. The other team got a steal and passed it up to a guy who was alone on the fast break. I ran up to try and block his shot, but I knew that he was going to pump fake. I waited for the fake and, sure enough, he faked the shot. I was trying to get in front of him to have a better chance of disrupting his shot and I jumped off his foot. I'm not sure if I landed on it too, but it's very likely that that happened too."

Sariah: "He was playing basketball. There was a foot involved."

The ER was actually surprisingly fast, for an ER. We got there around 10:45 and were out by 1. The parking was in a sketchy alley by the hospital, which is in a seedy part of town, but we hobbled in, with James hopping and leaning on me while I carried the car seat and diaper bag. Once we were in a room inside, a nurse came in to bring us an ice pack for James. "You probably saw the cops out there by the nurse's station," he said. "Don't worry. But if you hear yelling, close your door, okay?" So there's that.

The doctor told us that James had both sprained his foot and fractured his talus, and that he should use crutches "as long as he needed." This seemed too vague to be helpful, but when we asked for clarification, he repeated himself. The doctor was a mumbler, and I missed a lot of what he said anyway. He was very impressed with the amount of swelling, and he let James look at his x-rays where he pointed out some invisible line we couldn't see and said that was the fracture. 

Fast-forward a week full of learning how to use crutches to James's appointment with his primary care doctor, since the swelling hadn't gone down at all from the day of the injury. (Did you know James had never used crutches before? He didn't know how! Whaaaat!) The doctor looked at the ER doc's report which said nothing about fractures and instead reported a "dislocated ankle." They took new x-rays and the primary doctor said it was not even close to a dislocation, and the type of fracture we were told about wasn't there, but she couldn't rule out an avulsion fracture, so she referred us to a specialist for 5 days later. She gave us a nice boot instead of the little splint from the ER, much to James's pain relief.

Specialists are awesome. One glance at the x-rays and he says, "Yep. Avulsion fracture. And also this spacing here we're gonna watch." After less than one minute poking James's foot and asking questions, he says, "Okay. You've also got a grade 2 sprain, and it looks pretty bad. Impressive pain tolerance, though." He was fantastic. 

It's still very swollen and bruised, and James is having an interesting time trying to elevate it at school, since the chairs are attached to desks there, so he can't just move a loose chair over near where he is. For now he's just taking up two spots in class. Fortunately, he's surrounded by med students who are only too happy to facilitate healing as long as it comes with the story of how the injury happened!