A year ago in an important basketball game I rolled my ankle not once but twice because I could not stop the game until the refs called a time out.

I rarely get injured when I play and even when I do it is usually minor and in about 5 minutes of walking it off like a man it would be fine and pain-free (for the most part). This time was different.

Luckily, after I went over to the bench, a friend had a tube of Bengay and told me to put some on my injured ankle. The pain lessened to a point where I almost though I could play again but the team was doing fine and I had no reason to risk another roll on the already weakened ankle.

I went home after the game that day and took a nap. Before the nap, my ankle felt very uncomfortable and it had started to swell up but I’ve had sprained ankles before and that always happens at first. Later that afternoon when I woke up I was starving because I had not eaten much all day. I stepped off the bed and a volcanic explosion of hellish pain shot through my leg and I rolled back onto my bed holding my very swollen ankle.

The next 2 days I felt like a cancer patient. I had trouble getting out of bed and any movement to my right foot had me wincing in pain. Needless to say, this was the worst ankle sprain I had ever experienced.

As I tried my best to rest my leg, I still really wanted to go to the park and play some basketball. A week later, I decided to give it a try because the intense pain has lessened to only a constant discomfort. So slipped on an ankle brace and tied up my high top shoes in preparation for the park. I felt a few steps slow and jumped a few inches shorter than usual but overall there were no significant pain and at most my ankle just felt annoyingly uncomfortable. I went home that night satisfied.

A few days later I had another game and I suited up to play. I did not play many minutes because we were playing a big team and the bigs in our team won the game for us. It was an exciting game and I did my job cheering from the bench. When I got home later that day, my ankle felt very uncomfortable and was very swollen again. My mom (a doctor!) took a look and told me that there’s some internal bleeding and I should let my ankle rest and not push it. It really scared me so for one whole week I refrained from playing.

The lesson of the story is: When you are seriously hurt, don’t rush your way back onto the field, court, rink, ring  etc. It is definitely not worth it and I truly wish I had let my ankle rest for 2 whole weeks before playing again. I risked the chance of suffering an even bigger injury due to the weakness of my injured ankles. Don’t ever take an injury lightly and take care of your ankles because it really sucks when you can’t walk or drive when the ankles are hurt. If you sprain your ankle in any way, even if it doesn’t hurt much at first (it’s probably just adrenaline) just sit down and rest before you reevaluate the injury.