Day 80 - Can't stand for more then 30 minutes

Saturday, Feb. 9, 2013 - Week 19

Today is Chinese New Year's eve of the Snake! 

I woke up refreshed and ready to take my mom out for some Chinese New Years eve shopping for the traditional family dinner tonight to celebrate. Chinatown was crazy busy! There were so many people. So crowded to a point when you walk through the sidewalks, you're literally touching bodies. So my mom had to pick up one last food item and had me wait at the street corner with a bag of groceries. I had no idea how long she'd take! 30 minutes went by and I was starting to freeze standing in the shade. So I decided to walk across the street where the sun was shining to get warm. Then when I took a step, my ankle was sooo stiff, felt sore, and achy. I was doing pretty good for the first about 2 hours of walking through chinatown without much of any limping until that point. So I hobbled across the street with a bigger limp. 10 minutes later, my mom finally came back. It was then about 40 minutes of standing. At that point, I felt a lot of pressure on the outer ankle side. I had to do some ankle stretches moving my foot up and down. When I started to walk, I had to stop after 2 steps to rest before walking again. I guess the blood circulation stopped in that surgical area. I felt it alright. Finally I got back to my car to rest a few minutes before driving home for dinner. Throughout the night, my ankle was sore and tired. The more apparent limping slowly went away, but still had my little usual limp. However, the everyday bruised feeling is subsiding and narrowing down to a smaller portion of my ankle which is good! At least I know now how long I can't stand for. 

All that waiting and shopping for our traditional Chinese New Years eve feast with the family!

So full! I got home and did some of my prescribed new every other day ankle standing balancing exercises. I see why now Colleen said to do them every other day. I have been sore even until the next day, and feel like I do need a day to recover before doing them again. Here's another one of my exercises I have to do. Squats! I have these other balancing ones I'm doing too and feel the pressure around the outer ankle. Some weird pulling, knuckle cracking type feeling, bruised stretching pressure. I guess these new movements are not making my ankle happy. The weird crunching sometimes happens. The first day I did these at home was rough, I felt the pressure especially when leaning my body weight more on the foot. Afterwards, I continue to use the Chinese medicine: Dit Da Jow to help with the aching. I hope this pressure goes away soon.