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Old 03-22-06, 02:19 PM
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jennings780
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Originally Posted by C_heath
Well, Im far from a doctor. However, After "rolling" my ankle several times over the years, it has come the time for surgery. 18 degrees of "twist" of roll in your ankle from outside to inside warrants ligament surgury. After my last roll over (about 3 months ago) I got vomit sick. This had never happened and so I sought the ol Doc. After an Xray, he let me know quickly that I had 26 degrees of roll in my ankle.

He wore Xrays gloves, turned my ankle as far as I could stand and took the pic. He had never seen 26 degrees of stretch in ankle ligaments. You have 3 ligaments holding up your ankle on the outside of your foot looking something like this.... \I/ or the letter "Y" and 2 of mine are lying in the bottom of my foot.

Think of a old rubber band, dried out and then stretched, it the elasticity is not present anymore.

I dont know your current situation, however, my doc said this is like a concussion, the more it happens, the easier it is to happen again. Until you get to the point where I am (26 degrees). Im 33, in good shape, ride every day, but I didnt heal my foot when I would turn it.
C_Health: I had surgery to tighten ankle ligaments Nov.'04. I had a similiar situation to you it sounds like. Had a grade 3 sprain in college (1989) where I couldn't even put weight on my ankle for 3 or 4 weeks. I continued to sprain my ankle 10 -15 times a year. After a few years it stopped hurting. That should have been a bad sign, but I ignored it and didn't worry about it. I ended up dislocating it playing flag football in '04 - but it popped right back in. When I did that I want to an orthopedic guy that told me that my ankle was "subluxating" when I walked meaning that it was sliding out of place just by walking. So, I had two surgeries, was in a cast for 7 weeks and then an aircast for another 6 weeks.
Interesting. Surgery was totally worth it. But, my ankle does hurt most all the time now due to arthritis and cartledge damage. My surgeon said I'll probably need an ankle fusion in 10 or 15years.

When is your surgery? If you have any questions about recovery, pain or anything, feel free to PM me.

PEDEX: to avoid future problems you need to rehab your ankle by doing: (1) strengthening exercises, and (2) balancing exercises. Here's some good stuff on ankle sprains and how to treat them: http://www.aafp.org/afp/20010101/93.html

Because you could walk on your ankle, although painfully, it sounds like you didn't do too much damage, which is good. Hopefully rehab should help.
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