Ace Bandages and My Sister-in-Law: 2 Things That Come In Handy When I'm Pregnant

During my first pregnancy, I continued to run on a semi-regular basis well into my sixth month.  I prematurely hung up my Asics after an unsuccessful 3 miler ended with a rolled ankle, scraped knee and hands, and a bruised ego.  

No, that is not a discolored ham with toes, that is my swollen, bruised cankle.  Lovely, isn't it?

Although it looks pretty horrible on film, I was able to recover fairly quickly with the aid of my trusty Ace bandage and the long-distance consultations I received from my sister-in-law who is a physical therapist.  (Her name is also Amy Sanders, she also comes from a small Misssouri town, and has a brother named Chad...it is a weird, wacky coincidence that deserves a blog post all its own).

So fast forward to pregnancy no. 2.  I vowed that this time around I would avoid all injury and keep running as long as my back and bladder could keep up.  After a nasty bout of morning sickness then four weeks of bronchitis, then a record snowfall, I was itching to get back into a regular running routine.  So I had about two days in a row of pre-dawn jogging and was feeling good.  Then, this morning, as I was just easing into my first half mile, I started daydreaming about what I would eat when I went out to lunch with my coworkers (don't judge), and quite unexpectantly, my ankle rolled almost all the way to the ground, taking the rest of my body with it.

I caught myself just before eating pavement, but oh man, did it hurt!  According to my Garmin, I was exactly .5 miles from home and had no option but to get up, grit my teeth, and hoof it back.  Since it was a weekday, I also had no choice but to slap my trusty Ace bandage on, shove my cankle into some riding boots and headed to work.  

Like before, I got some recommendations and reassurance from my sister-in-law that I had indeed sprained my ankle and would likely need 4-6 weeks to recover completely.  It was like déjà-vu, only at five months instead of six.  

I don't have a similarly grotesque picture of the ham with toes (at least not yet), but I was amused to find that at the end of a long day when I finally peeled the boot and Ace bandage off, my ankle wasn't swollen in the slightest!  Instead of a ham dangling from the end of my leg, my calf had apparently ingested it.

Seriously, this photo is a dream for the Ace company marketing team and physical therapists everywhere who preach about compression wrapping to minimize swelling in the affected area.  

Will I recover enough to give it another go? Or throw in the towel and take up pre-natal yoga instead?  Only time will tell.  Don't worry about me, though, I've got plenty of Ace bandages, ice packs, and FaceTime with my own personal physical therapist to get me through the next four months.   For now, it's R.I.C.E. (whatever that stands for) and sleeping an extra hour in the mornings.

Maybe I should invest in a treadmill.