In the wake of discovering that my ankles weren’t going to be adapting to concrete floors I picked up a pair of soft ankle braces to take the place of the ace wraps I’d been using to give my ankles support. The braces weren’t anything fancy. $10 each at the local pharmacy. But they helped, a lot, and weren’t horribly uncomfortable to wear while I was at work.
This past Thursday, part way through the day, my feet apparently swelled up and the braces became uncomfortable to wear, so I ended up not wearing them for the last couple hours of the work day. Things didn’t hurt to badly. So yesterday, Friday, since I was only working a 5hr shift I decided to try the day without them. I never did figure out what caused my feet to swell and I wanted to see how bad the shorter shift would hurt without the braces.
Wasn’t to bad. Made it through the 5hrs with no braces with not much additional pain, though I could tell my knees were going to be more sore than usual.
Till I left work.
1/2hr drive home and both ankles and knees stiffened up drastically and getting out of the car at home was, well, interesting. Staggered into the house, greeted the dogs, and collapsed with my feet up.
It is now Saturday morning, I leave for today’s work shift in an hour. My ankles are still very stiff and painful despite some careful stretching exercises. My knees are better, but not as good as normal.
Crap.
Obviously ankle support isn’t optional for any reasonable length work shift. For the moment I’m just going to pick up a 2nd pair of the cheap braces in the larger size for the next time my feet swell. But I guess I’d better start looking for better ankles supports too…..