The lass twisted her ankle at hockey today. I missed the incident, but she didn’t end up coming off the ice for another 5 minutes or so. In fact, if it hadn’t been for one of the coaches coming and alerting me that something might be wrong, she may well have tried to tough it out through the whole practice.
She was weepy when she came over to the boards, as the coach had said she was. After taking her skate off, I could see some swelling starting which eliminated the possibility that it was one of those pseudo-injuries kids often experience. They land on something wrong, or they twist something a little too much and they start screaming bloody murder. Thirty seconds later and a quick check and they are out there running around like nothing ever happened. In this case through, she hadn’t just harmlessly tweaked her ankle, she’d sprained it.
So the rest, ice, compress elevate regimen was put into action.
For most of the afternoon, she was OK. She couldn’t walk on it and simply hopped around when she needed to get somewhere. I tried to get her to move her ankle around a bit to keep it from getting stiff, but she was leery of moving her foot much. Aside from that, it seemed like she was doing well.
Then, a little after dinner time she started getting weepy. She’d fidget a bit and settle down, then she’d get weepy again. She said it felt like “my skates are still on” which I realized meant that she was experiencing the swelling in her ankle. After that, things started going down hill.
It was a bit after her bedtime by this point so I took her upstairs so she could get ready for bed. I’d originally intended to let her stay up, but that seemed imprudent now. She needed to get some sleep and heal a bit. I wrapped her ankle up in an Ace bandage, helped her get in bed. She whined a little the entire time, and I stayed with her for a bit to help her settle down.
I went to check on her 15 minutes later and she was asleep, which I figured would be the last of it. But a few minutes after the boy finally went to bed, he called down to say that she was crying.
When she finally settled down, she revealed she’d fallen on her ankle trying to go the bathroom. She was crying hard now and her ankle was really bothering her. I could also see some of the puffiness seeping down into her toes below the Ace wrap. Her crying seemed to be escalating, which was I figured was due to a combination of the pain and, now, fatigue. The boy fled his room to go sleep on a couch downstairs.
Finally, she complained about her foot being elevated. I told I had it propped up to help it heal overnight. Unfortunately, she’s a moving sleeper and can’t stay still enough to be able to keep her foot on the pillows. She said it felt better when her foot was down on the bed, so I removed the pillows and she did her best to curl up and go to sleep. I’ve since checked her and she’s managed to calm down. Hopefully, she sleeps the rest of the night.
Having been involved in sports my whole life, I knew what she was going through. I also knew there was little to nothing I could do to comfort her. It wasn’t easy watching her hug and cry into her stuffed animals. The emotional side of me was trying to think of something to help give her a little relief. There was also a rational side of me saying I needed to let her work through this, that she wasn’t going to die from a sprained ankle and the best thing I could do for her was to remain calm and teach her a little bit about treating herself.
The worst part of the evening was when she muttered through the tears “I don’t want to play hockey anymore.” I’d knew what she meant, but decided to play dumb a bit, “You won’t be playing hockey tomorrow kiddo.” She wasn’t having any of it, “No, I mean I don’t want to play again. I don’t want to hurt like this.”
The rest of the season has the potential to be interesting.