Blog Prompt 1--Just the Beginning

1. The story of my most serious injury:

Admittedly, I have always been a bit of a baby and a bit overly-careful because, quite frankly, I have a very low tolerance for pain. I've never broken a bone, I've never been in the hospital, the only surgery I've had was to remove my wisdom teeth and I've only scraped my knees bad enough to extract blood a grand total of three times. Naturally, my first attempt at tackling these blog prompts had to be a difficult one.

Technically speaking, what I consider my worst injury is serious because it's still effecting me ten years after it initially happened: spraining my right ankle.

The story behind the injury is, quite frankly, stupid, but it's what the prompt calls for, so here goes. When I was ten my family took a week-long vacation to Maui. It was my first (and only, actually) time visiting Hawaii so I came home laden with souvenirs and random purchases--including a pair of 6" platform sandals. Not that I'm, in any way, less of a Spice Girls fan now, but at the time, they were at the height of their popularity and, until Hawaii, I hadn't been able to find platforms that high. Obviously, I had to have them.

Once we returned home, I hardly ever wore them because, let's be honest, they weren't easy to walk in at all. But there was one day about two years later that I decided to pull them out and wear them to walk across the street to my friend Rachel's house. I made it about three quarters of the way across the street before I took a wrong step, turned my ankle and fell off the shoe altogether. I made a big to-do about it and cried and limped and wore a brace regularly for a while after that, but that was also the year I was competing in three routines and had dance class almost every night of the week. Taking time off to let my ankle heal never even crossed my mind.

So, today, I still get horrible pain if I dance too long or land too hard on it from a leap, for example. If I wear heels for too long it gets stiff and aches for days afterward. My new hobby of running certainly doesn't make it feel any better either. But, after all this time, I'm quite used to it. In most cases I can ignore the pain or I know when I've gone too far and need a brace for a few days. It'll never heal completely and stop hurting, of that I'm quite sure, but so long as I can still dance on it or wear heels, I can live with it.