Baseball Terms

In baseball parlance, I have an ankle. That ankle is keeping me from the treadmill routine I like to keep. I’m frustrated that I’ve kept up the routing since New Year’s and now it is suffering.

Last Friday I hurt my ankle wildly jumping over piles of sorted laundry on my basement floor. They were waiting to go into the washer when the hot water flex hose under the sink in the first floor bathroom burst.

The kids and I heard a torrent of water. I thought the washer hose had come out of the stationery tub in the basement. But something was not quite right about the sound. It was too loud. That is because we heard not only the water running through the bathroom floor down to the basement floor, but also the water fall cascading from under the vanity doors to the bathroom floor, and the high pressure shower going on inside the closed vanity.

It sounded like a rainstorm poring inside the house. That is pretty much what it was; a hot water rain torrent inside the house.

When I saw the water coming from the bathroom I turned barefooted and leaped over the laundry mountains and up the basement stair cliffs. Somewhere along the way I was aware of a twinge in my ankle, but I really could not think of anything but stopping the water.

Of course, when I opened the vanity doors, the high pressure hot shower was loosed upon the entire bathroom. Using an unbelievable amount of pressure with my right thumb and fumbling with my left hand to turn the shut off valve was uncomfortable as my jeans and sweater and hair and glasses were soaked in an instant. (Back to baseball parlance, I got a thumb too. Three nice painful crescent shaped burns from that darn hot water pipe. The water isn’t set to a scalding temperature, but when you have to press hard I found out it still burns.)

Once the water was turned off the cleanup could begin. I suppose it is fortunate that the laundry pile of dirty towels was nearly underneath the torrent on the basement floor. It looked like the ice chests I pushed under there only had a few gallons a piece in them. And all that saturated dirty laundry was all over the floor to help make clean up easier.

Once things were as dry as I could get them, I looked at my ankle. No pain any more. No swelling. Good to go.

It was not until Sunday night I happened to look at my ankle and saw this huge swollen thing in its place. So I’ve been icing it. That helps for a little while, but it swells back up again when I use it. As I keep said ankle in a place where I need to use it frequently, I’ve decided to give up the walks for one week and use the time for ice therapy instead. It is frustrating, because I don’t feel any discomfort, but to look at it one would not be inclined to believe that.