You'd think I'd have learned my lesson by now, but no. When getting ready to play some singles on Sunday, I looked at the ankle brace I keep in my giganto, holds-everything-you-could-possibly-need-or-want tennis bag and thought, "Eh, my ankle's been fine lately. I don't need that today." Naturally, about four balls into the warm-up, I'm running to a backhand, getting into a hitting stance, when I feel my right foot start to roll and then --
POP!
-- I'm rolling on the court yelling, "Fucking goddamn sonofabitch!" or something to that effect. Luckily, I remember the embarassment from a couple years back when I twisted my ankle during my first match in a doubles tournament and threw a world class whiny fit on court -- "remember" meaning that I'm often reminded of it by people who rightly snicker about it to this day -- so this time I clamped down on the profanity and sucked it up. Like most ankle sprains I've had, it's the initial pain that's the worst, and walking it off actually did some good. So I belatedly strapped on the brace for some stability so I could play some doubles.
Naturally, I played better injured than I've played healthy for the past few weeks. I'm assuming it's the "Mrs. Howell Technique" -- distracting yourself from the pain of your shoes by wearing earrings that even more painfully pinch -- by which the pain in my right ankle completely masked the pain in my left knee that's been undermining my serve and movement.
Bad move. By Sunday night I had a major cankle that was unresponsive to the RICE combination of rest, ice, compression and elevation, and I spent Monday on the couch, trying to RICE it some more. The cankle remains, but the pain has lessened. And I'm off the court for two weeks, most likely. I really need the bionic era to being soon. Then I could just roll up my leg skin and get things fixed.
Or, you know, I could just take the 60 seconds to put on the frickin' ankle brace next time.
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