My Journey With Health And Fitness – Dealing With An Ankle Brace

Well I’m excited. We have a contractor starting work on our condo!!! Nearly 3 years ago all of our closets were destroyed by termites because the person responsible for maintaining the condo fell down on the job when it came to fumigation. While he had replaced the built in closets in the bedrooms, we have been patiently waiting for the walk-in closet to be rebuilt. I finally gave up and decided we would pay for it to be done ourselves but when I asked for a quote what he came back with was outrageous. We had a contractor recommended to us so he priced out rebuilding the closet, installing a fan on our deck, shoring up our dining table, installing towel racks and putting in a custom screen door at the entrance of the condo. His quote for all of this came in $3,000 less than the previous quote for just the closet! The work is starting today and I can’t wait for it to be all finished.

I have been pretty diligent about wearing my ankle brace even while here in Mexico. To be clear, this is not one of those slip on sleeve type braces, this is a semi-rigid type and it was quiet expensive. It has a hard shell that covers my Achilles tendon all the way up to the start of my calf muscle. It is then secured by an overlapping strap at the top and then 2 wrap around straps that go over my foot and ankle (ok, I get this might be difficult to picture without seeing it). The point of this brace is to provide absolute stability to my ankle to hopefully allow for healing and to ensure I don’t twist it in any way.

I promised my physiotherapist that I would wear this brace as much as possible. To me that means whenever I do my morning walks as well as my online workouts. It also means that if we are going out anywhere that has uneven roads/sidewalks that the brace is on. This even includes if I go to a beach club because of walking in the sand.

If you have never worn an ankle brace you probably have no idea as to how crappy it is. First of all, I never realized how flexible you ankle is in terms of, in particular, working out. There are now several moves that are very difficult because of that joint being held in place. Secondly, it tends to rub against my skin which initially caused blisters. I resolved this by now wearing a sock that comes up to mid shin whenever I have the brace on (by the way, I don’t wear crew socks normally). And finally especially here in Mexico, wearing that brace and 2 socks (the aforementioned crew sock as well as my normal compression walking sock) it is extremely hot! When I finally take the brace off after all my workouts in the morning trust me those socks are soaked with sweat.

But you know what? I will keep wearing this brace because maybe it will help me avoid having surgery. I really want to make sure that my ankle is healing and that it is not at risk of my damage. Yes it sucks and is not very attractive but if this is what it takes to be able to keep going I will continue to wear it as long as I need to.