A Broken Ankle and a Broken Heart

What is the word that is the exact opposite of hypochondriac? That is just what I am. No matter what happens, I refuse to believe that I am ill, or that I need medication. I think my intake of medicine is restricted to perhaps two or three tablets in a year. For close to twenty five years, I never considered myself sick enough to visit a doctor. Until the time I broke my ankle. I thought I had twisted it on the stairs. I thought it was a just a little sprain and it would heal itself, as do all my other ailments. You know, like when other people are down with fever, they take paracetamol. I take a bath and feel instantly cured. I'm not too sure of what people do when they sprain their ankle. But I try to keep walking as much as I can, because I know that if I give it too much rest it will hurt like anything when I try to move it again. So that's what I did. I tried to get up from my desk and walk around a bit every half an hour or so. And I did not leave my gym routine until a dear friend of mine gave me a sound scolding for jogging on the treadmill with a hurt ankle. And did I mention that I went rafting that weekend?

This story does not end here. I'd been longing to buy myself a car for quite some time then. I'd booked it, and I was supposed to pick it up immediately after returning from that trip. That I did. Thankfully my Dad was there to drive it home. Because my left ankle was in no state to handle a clutch. The noteworthy point here is that this was five days after I tripped on the stairs and it still did not occur to me that this could be more than a sprain and I needed to go to one of those scary places called a hospital. Only while going home from work the next day I felt some real pain (who knows what I'd been feeling so far...) in that ankle. Still not enough to warrant a visit to a doctor. Took the next day off, got some rest, and was up and about the day after that as usual. One week of enduring that discomfort, and another sound scolding from my friend was what it took to take me to the hospital. If I'd known that the orthopaedic would turn out to be that cute, and that witty, and that interesting, I'd certainly have gone sooner.

So anyway, I had a X-ray done. I showed it to the cute doctor. He very gently broke the news that I had a hairline fracture and would need a below-knee walking cast for four weeks. He showed me the little crack in the X-ray. He then very deftly and quickly wrapped up the poor, tormented ankle in a synthetic plaster and left it to set. After it set, I was no longer in pain, and only then did I realise what an insane amount of pain I'd been in all week. I was prescribed three days of complete bed rest, with the ankle propped up on a cushion. That was the toughest part for me because I am basically pretty restless and fidgety.

After the cast and the painkillers, the ankle was no longer in agony. I just had to be careful not to get the cast wet from inside. This was a bit of a problem, since I have an obsessive need to take a bath twice a day throughout the year, especially in the summer, and this happened in rather hot weather. But basically, I was able to do stuff normally. So the other two visits to the hospital were intended for me to see the cute doctor again and listen to his wit and humour. The day I went to have the cast removed, I asked if he had any more words of advice for me. He told me, "Stay away from doctors. Except when you get married and have a baby." But how do you stay away from a doctor who is so incredibly attractive? Well, as it turns out, I haven't seen him or any other doctor in the year that has passed since then. Although I have been trying to find an opportunity to take someone else with broken bones to him, I have had no success there.

Some six months or so after this episode, there was a write-up in HT City about cute doctors in Delhi. It talked about three such doctors. This one was also there. Apparently he is married and has two kids. He certainly did not seem to be old enough for that, but hey, what do I know?

All jokes apart, I sincerely hope I do not have to visit a doctor ever again for as long as I live, except the time, like this doctor said, I get married and have a baby. There was a lot of pain in my heart because of the car that I bought and which I could not drive for two whole months because the left ankle did not have enough strength in it, even after the cast was cut open. During this time my brother drove it around a little and reduced the front bumper to smithereens. (Okay, so we all know I'm exaggerating. But it was reduced to a state where it needed to be replaced. I never actually saw it in that state, actually.) There was a lot of restlessness because of the workout routine which was interrupted. There was a lot of discomfort because of the cast itself. And a ton of boredom from the fact that I wasn't able to go out anywhere, because I couldn't move about too much. So I was reduced to seeing only the friends who were sweet enough to visit me at home. I'm not sure if I've learnt my lesson, or if there was actually a lesson to be learnt here. Would it have been better if I'd gone to the hospital sooner? I don't know. But it would probably have been a lot worse if I'd gone later. Who knows? I guess we'll never know unless I try out something like that...