Life with a Broken Ankle

 I don’t have a broken ankle, but my partner recently broke hers. Most of my experience before this was at school where there always seemed to be someone who’d broken something and had a nice white cast which we gathered around to autograph. It seemed like a trivial rite of passage for the unfortunate few.

Turns out that a broken ankle is quite a big deal. To start with, you can’t put any weight on it for about 6 weeks.  If you have a job that requires you to be walking around, it’s just about impossible for several months. The NHS doesn’t provide you with a wheelchair and in any case, one wouldn’t be particularly useful if you have a substantial number of steps to reach your front door. You’re not totally immobile, the NHS does give you crutches and for the first 6 weeks or so, you can make some progress relying on your good leg to bear a lot of the weight.

A major irritation with crutches is what to do with them when you’re NOT using them. Wherever you “park” them, they are very likely to fall over. All the surfaces are rounded so if you lean them against a wall or table, the slightest knock will send them crashing to the floor. For a short video on the issue and a possible solution, see https://youtube.com/shorts/n5cous0aNL8?feature=share 

All weight is taken on the crutches and your good leg. Yoiur  arms get very tired.

Even if you can move around with crutches, it’s very hard to carry anything at all because your hands are fully occupied with the crutches. You might be able to make a cup of tea but you can’t carry it away to another table. Shopping is almost impossible because you can’t operate a basket or trolley. Taking rubbish out or positioning a wheelie bin is out of the question.

You can move some items by throwing them across the room or even up or down stairs.

One of the things we discovered is that empty space is the enemy of the crutch-user. It forces you to use both crutches all the time. My house is quite spacious so this was hard work. Her flat is much smaller, and she could stand and move about in the kitchen area without using the crutches – relying on the worksurfaces for support. Related to this, my staircase doesn’t have any bannisters, so she had to get up and down sat on her rear  (It’s actually quite difficult to manage stairs of any sort with crutches and there’s a lot of potential for falls). Transferring to crutches again at the top of the stairs was made much easier by placing a chair within reach.

Another issue was that it was all very tiring. Partly this was the laborious process of moving around but also the process of the body doing repairs takes it out of you.

With so many tasks impossible or at least very difficult, people living on their own have a very hard time of it. Even for those with a willing carer, it probably means an enormous adjustment of roles. Fortunately, I had the time and inclination to help and she was willing to accept it. I think it’s brought us closer but it’s not just a simple matter of asking a carer to do the things you’d usually do – you could find that  they don’t do it the way you want or are insufficiently pernickety.

Eight months after the accident, it’s largely healed and she returned tp her physical job about 2 months ago. We have also returned to dancing but there is still some pain and going down steps is difficult. 

And we never had a nice white cast suitable for autographs.