I really meant to do this in real time, as the injury and recovery were happening, but I never got around to it, so now I am going back in time to catch up to today.
2/23/2008 – injury day
On Saturday, February 23rd 2008, Ray (my roommate) and I went to Touchstone in San Jose to do some indoor bouldering style rock climbing. I had just recently been introduced to top-rope climbing (which is much safer) and was in the process of switching from bouldering to top-rope as my main climbing.
It all started here, on this pink V2 bouldering problem.
I had been working on this problem for about 2 sessions, and just couldn’t finish it. On the rare occasions I did get close, I would chicken out before even attempting the final move.
Ray was able to do it in about 2 or three tries, although he did come very very close to falling from the top of the wall, just barely managing to get his feet back on the wall. After this, of course now I had to try the final move. Ray was very encouraging and so I went for it.
BIG MISTAKE. I was able to grab the final hold, the one with the \__/ shaped pink (and green) tape under it at the top of the wall, but I wasn’t able to hold on, and my other hand wasn’t holding anything and both my feet lost their place on the wall. I came crashing down pretty fast, missed the crash pad, and was just pushed to safety by Ray.
Unfortunately, I landed on my left ankle, sort of on / off the crash pads. I think my ankle might have even landed right in between the three crash pads at the base of this wall. Right away the nice Touchstone staff brought me ice and advil (and told me that they were positive it was just a bad sprain), and I did my best to hold back tears.
I’ve been told in the past that I’m a “wuss” and that I must have a very low pain tolerance, but let me tell you, that is completely wrong. I managed to make it through this with little more than glistening eyes, and it HURT!
At this point, we’d been climbing for oh, not more than 20 minutes. There was no way I could walk, let alone climb, so after sitting for about a half hour, I hopped my way into the locker room, and very gingerly changed back into my regular street clothes. I think it was karma, or bad luck, or something, because I was wearing a Roots t-shirt that says “Canada” on the back. I was jinxed from the start!
After waiting what seemed like forever, Ray picked me up in his car, and we went to In N Out for lunch. By now, I had lost my appetite, so I really didn’t eat anything.
My ankle was already swelling, but there was no bruising yet.
Since it was my left ankle, and because I drive a manual transmission Civic, there was no way I could drive. I sent David a message telling him I was “injured” and he was nice enough not to say I told you so (since his opinion is that all climbing should involve a rope and harness). He came and picked me up and carried me up the stairs at his place so I wouldn’t have to hop on one foot.
For the rest of the weekend, I tried to ice and elevate as much as possible, but it didn’t seem to be helping. There was no way I could even put my foot flat on the floor to stand, let alone walk on it.
2/25/2008 – first doctor visit (one of many)
On Monday, I took the day off from work, and David drove me home. I still wasn’t convinced I needed to go to a doctor, but David insisted. Ray happened to be home that day, and offered to take me, so I called and got an appointment. Podiatry said they could see me in 10 days (which is just ridiculous, by the way), but said if I saw a primary care doctor and got a referral I could be seen sooner.
At the medical center, I got a wheelchair (fun, except Ray pushes a wheelchair like it’s a race car) and was seen pretty promptly by the doctor. He took a look at my ankle and sent me for x-rays. After the x-rays were ready, he looked those over and said it looked like I had a “small bone chip” in the ankle area but that may or may not have anything to do with the current injury, it could have been there a long time. He wrote me a referral for a “severe ankle sprain” and sent me home with an aircast. We stopped at the pharmacy and I bought a pair of crutches. All this hopping was really tiring out my right leg and not much fun.
Late Monday night was when the bruising became really apparent.
