Basketball can be injurious to your health

Check out the unwelcome addition to my life. I just finished a week on crutches following a pretty significant ankle sprain. Swelling has not gone down much though I feel quite a bit more strength down there. Not sure how long this will take to fix, maybe another week on crutches?

All this started late afternoon of Friday, December 29. My three sons and I were having one of our little two-on-two basketball games at the court in the park just west of our house. Chris and I were playing against Patrick and Paul Jr. Darkness was falling and we were down to the last couple points. I jumped under the guise of contesting a shot by Paul Jr. (or failing that, I was just going to foul him). On landing from the not-so-dizzying heights, I rolled my left ankle. Swelling was immediate. Oh, he made the shot anyway. I walked around pretending to play defense while Patrick finished us off, then gimped home.

So on Patricia’s day off from her job at the emergency department (Saturday, December 30), she took me to the emergency department at Mayo Hospital. I met a bunch of her co-workers, a nice group and it was fun. They did an x-ray and gave me some training on using crutches. (Though they didn’t show me the tricky part, which is negotiating stairs.)

Patricia and I went to coffee on December 31. I haven’t set foot outside the house since. So I’m still looking forward to my first outing of 2007.

My pals here are pretty good about accommodating me, but I think I deserve more sympathy. It is disappointing that I can’t play basketball when the weather is so favorable. How could you beat playing 2-on-2 with three sons?