Initial Response to Injury

Career Interrupting Injuries
I mmediate Response to an Injury

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I've found that a lot of my success in dealing with a particular injury came because of what I did right after getting it. Good trainers will tell you that the first 24 hours after an injury are critical.
There is a kind of cushion that your mind gives you before it really sinks in that your body is injured. I would advise you to be aware that when you are injured, chances are that your body is deceiving you.
Say you sprain your ankle at the skate park. It doesn't feel too bad. You go back to skating on it for a while. Then you limp home. It looks kind of bruised. You rub it for a bit, then go take a hot shower. It feels better. You then go for a walk to your friend's house. Hours later you come home, and it still doesn't hurt too bad. You look at it and it seems kind of swollen. You go to bed. The next day it's swollen up like a small tree trunk, making a natural cast on your ankle that pretty much immobilizes it. The swollen areas are reddish and anywhere near bone is black and blue.
Your response to this minor injury was so delayed, that you wound up with an injury that will take weeks to heel instead of days. What's more, this type of lingering injury could set you up for a reinjury or an injury to another joint due to favoring it.
Proper response would have been this:
You sprain your ankle at the skate park. You accept quickly that you may have severely sprained your ankle. Look at the injury. If it's real black and blue, or mis-shapen, it may be broken. In which case, a trip to the emergency room will be needed.
Let's assume it's not too bad, it's just a sprain. You skate around for a few minutes, not just to test how bad it is, but to mentally get over the shock of hurting yourself. If it's not a real bad injury, some exercise will be good to keep you from getting psyched out. You decide that clearly, you're hurt and the injury has to addressed and not ignored.
Now you head home, vowing to forget today, and live to fight another day. Try to get home without putting much weight on the sprain.
RICE: the classic sprain treatment

At home you use RICE, or Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation. First ice it. Elevate the leg with the ice pack, and just sit there and watch TV. If you want, you can wrap it with an Ace bandage. Some professional sports trainers advocate wrapping the bandage around a bag of crushed ice, for both icing and compression.
I haven't tried the ace bandage and crushed ice method, but it sounds smart. My method is similar, using ice and compression at almost the same time. For an ankle my first step is to ice it, then shave the ankle and tape it with athletic tape. This is the best compression. It won't swell, and provides support.
Avoid swelling
It's of the utmost importance not to let swelling kick in. Don't go in the shower and heat up the ankle. If you take a shower, hold the ankle away from the heat. Don't let any swelling set in. If there are scrapes on it, clean those out with soap and warm, not hot, water.
Resist the temptation to walk on it and see how bad it's hurt. Trust me, it's hurt. Just stay off it. Watch TV or go to bed. Don't go walking over to your friend's house to get sympathy. Don't walk to a bar and self-medicate.
Next day, if it hasn't swollen up like a balloon, you've saved yourself days or even weeks of healing time. It'll probably be black and blue. Change the tape if you used any. Cut a line through the wrappings with a scissors, then gently pull the tape off. Continue to ice, compress, and elevate it. It's important to stay off it, more or less, for a day or two. Then you can start to rehab it.
Reacting to an injury is basically a form of confrontation. Try to avoid denial. You could be badly hurt, so quit for the day and check out how bad it is. If it feels fine in a couple of hours, fine. Go back out and skate with only that session lost. If it's hurt, take some time off and stay off it.

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