How My Ankle Made Me Temporarily Deaf

[lilithsaintcrow]

I know I shouldn’t have done it. My bouldering partner had just finished talking about how sometimes, one’s body tells one it’s just not going to work a certain route on that particular day, and one should listen. The risk of getting hurt is too high. I’d agreed, and I warmed up on some easier bouldering problems while she was practicing her knots. I knew I wasn’t feeling a hundred percent, but I wanted to gut it out.

I moved to a particular route I’m working–it starts out with hand-matching on a nasty little pancake, then getting all the way over into the left hip, reaching up while tensing one’s abs and sticking a sort-of-pocket with the right hand, then going up and smearing while the sort-of-pocket turns into an undercling and one has to half-dyno to stick one’s fingers on a shoulderblade-shaped hold near the top. (Translation: it’s a real bitch, and it requires a lot of core strength, trust in one’s left foot on bare rock, and faith.) I got up to the dyno, knew I wasn’t going to make it, and climbed down. Then I did it again, and I sent it, reached the top hold and felt gratified.

My body warned me, though, with a tremor in my quads and my hands not really sticking like they should. Don’t do that again, my body said.

I didn’t listen.

I chalked up, ran my gaze over the route, and stubbornly tried it again. I thought momentum would help. I failed the dyno, my fingers slipped off the top hold, and I fell. Which would have been okay, because I went loose and there were plenty of pads…except my foot landed exactly wrong on the edge of a new crash mat, my ankle rolled, and I immediately knew I’d done something utterly stupid. I let out a sound that scared the bejesus out of my partner, who dropped her knot and came to check things out, and I could barely hear her over the ringing in my ears. It hurt like hell. How my ankle could have made me temporarily deaf I don’t know. Jeez.

Anyway, by the time I had my breath back my ankle was already beginning to swell, so I practiced knots a little and hobbled around. Nothing broken, just strained. Needless to say, there was no more climbing yesterday, which irritated me to no end, especially since it was my own damn fault. My partner made sure I was okay to drive, we called it a session, and I hobbled through a couple errands I couldn’t put off before going home to ice and ibuprofen all. damn. day.

This morning the ankle is swollen and bruised, and I’m moving pretty slowly. No running, dammit, but taking the weekend off won’t hurt me. It may even help; I’ll be really fresh on Monday.

I’ll be working on the next combat-scene post today in between other stuff I have to get accomplished, it might be tomorrow before I get it posted, so bear with me. But, as extra credit, you can take a look at my description above, and see if you can plot the arc of the story, as well as see where I revised to make the pacing quicker or slower. (Hint: look at sentence length.)

See you in a bit.

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