As those of you who have been reading my blog know, I have been going to physical therapy for the tear in one of my peroneal tendon for about six weeks now. This has been a new experience for me. My only impressions of physical therapy up to this point were based off movies. You know exactly the type of movie I’m talking about. Yes, the one where the guy is hurt in the car accident and is told he is never going to walk again and then through some dramatic physical therapy rehabilitation work he somehow miraculously regains use of his legs.

Now, after having actually done physical therapy myself, I can say it’s not quite as entertaining as it may seem in the movies. In fact, most of the therapy work just makes you feel like an idiot. Yes, all of you who have done physical therapy before are nodding your heads right now in agreement. But for those of you who have not had the physical therapy experience, let me enlighten you.

Physical therapy is meant to strengthen and remobilize your injured area-wherever that may be. In my case, this area is of course my ankle. So, for roughly an hour per session I have to do awkward ankle exercises and stretches while the physical therapists observes. Doesn’t sound too bad to you? Then you really aren’t imagining it correctly. Do you remember those days in junior high gym class where they combined the girls and boys classes and you all did aerobics together? Well, back then, all the boys made complete fools of themselves. Yes boys, you know it’s true. Your clumsy representation of “the running man” was definitely laughable and the fact that you couldn’t even get jumping jacks right was pretty pathetic. Of course, I was much too nice to make fun of all of you back then-so let me do so now. You looked pretty moronic.

Physical therapy is much like those pitiable gym classes, only the teacher is concentrating just on you and all your idiotic moves. There are no other morons to distract them. And to top it off, you are working on the weakest and most uncoordinated part of your body so you make a mess out of simplest of movements. Needless to say, throughout physical therapy you know you look completely ridiculous.

Despite the embarrassment, physical therapy seems to be helping my ankle. I will have to do it for one more month before a definite decision is made by my doctor on the next course of action. Surgery is now looming in my future so I will happily swallow my pride and do my silly looking exercises in hopes that they will decrease my chances of getting sliced open.

On the upside, the physical therapist I have been going to has been very nice, helpful, and great to work with-much nicer than any gym teacher I ever had. I would recommend him to anyone looking for a chance to publicly humiliate themselves through therapy.

Are you all dying to know what is wrong with my ankle? The answer is probably negative. But for the few who are curious here’s what I found out from my MRI:

One of my Peroneal tendons is torn. The Peroneal tendons are located behind the outer ankle bone and help stabilize and protect the foot and ankle. In my case it is the longer of the two tendons that is injured. The doctor seemed quite surprised that I had been participating in sports and physical activities over the last seven years with this injury. He obviously has had no experience dealing with the stubbornness of a Nelson. Nelson’s don’t let a little thing like a tear in a tendon stop them from playing soccer, running, snowboarding, mountain biking, or basically anything they feel like doing.

The MRI also showed a possible lesion in my ankle cartilage. The radiologist’s report was incomplete however so my doctor needs to gather further information before he will be able to assess if there is a lesion. He’s going to get back to me on that one.

So now what? Intensive physical therapy is the first step in making my ankle happy again. Hopefully, after six weeks of therapy my ankle will be good as new. If not, I may have to look into more invasive options. I have faith though in the toughness of my body, so I think physical therapy will do the trick.

The really hard thing now is that I am supposed to stay off my ankle as much as possible and avoid aggravating it while it is in the healing process. This is tricky for me because I don’t do sedentary. Hopefully my ankle heals before I become legally insane from sitting around too much.

MRI or Magnetic Resonance Imaging is a popular method used to image the soft tissues of the body. It works by creating a strong magnetic field instead of using ionizing radiation like an x-ray machine does. An MRI machine usually has a long slender tube that the patient has to lie perfectly still in for 30 minutes to 2 hours, depending on the type of test being done. As you can imagine this is prone to make those with claustrophobic tendencies, such as myself, a little crazy and often these patients have to be sedated.

I had my first experience with one of these machines this week. My ankle has been “chronically sprained” for seven years now. I sprained it playing soccer the spring before Jason and I got married and it has never been the same. I went to a doctor a couple years after this mishap, due to my ankle’s refusal to behave normally, but the doctor diagnosed it as a chronic sprain and said there was very little that could be done about it besides wearing an ankle brace.

Since I have had to tolerate the swelling and pain of this injury for years now, Jason convinced me that it was time to get a second opinion. I went to an orthopedic doctor that specializes in chronic injuries and he was very helpful. He has already come up with several ideas as to cause, and options for treatment. To help him correctly diagnose what is going on with my ankle he recommended getting an MRI.

Thankfully, the MRI machine I used was an Altaire®. It had a more open design that was friendlier to the claustrophobic prone. I was also grateful that I didn’t have to wear one of those open-back hospital gowns; I got to wear scrubs instead. Who wants to be stuck in a machine for over half an hour with a breeze blowing up their backside?

However, it was much harder to lie perfectly still than one might imagine-and much more uncomfortable. Nothing makes you want to twitch more than knowing that you can’t. But now it’s all done and hopefully it will give my doctor some useful information.