Volleyball Journey - Part 2

Monday she shows up at training dressed to train. Sam takes her aside and gets her to remove the shoe and sock and bandage to look at the ankle. He is happy with the progress and decides to tape her ankle up and get her into some light training and see how it feels. 

 

Andrew works nearby as she goes through some simple movements and jogging slowly building up the pace. She works on some change of direction movements and feels happy that her ankle is doing well. After the training, Andrew helps her to remove the tape and takes a quick look at the ankle to make sure it has not become swollen, which it had not. 

 

By Wednesday she is cleared to play by Sam, and he tapes her ankle as a precaution. She starts the match as normal, but she continues being a little cautious at the start with her jumps and landings. As the game progresses, she feels more comfortable and confident in her ankle and she starts to push a bit harder. The girls win the match, and all is well. 

 

The rest of the season goes without any problems for Alex, unfortunately the girls don’t make the championships, but they had learned a lot and grown as a team and the coaching staff are very happy with their year. 

 

Year 2 starts after a much-needed break, everyone returns refreshed and relaxed. The normal post season break training starts on Monday afternoon. Fitness is the goal this year for the coaching staff and they have issued all the girls with a strict fitness plan to get them up to speed quickly. 

 

The second week of training and a practice match with the senior girls and things start to go bad for the team. Bree takes a nasty landing and injures her knee very badly, she will most likely end up missing the rest of the season. Another player, Brielle, has broken her wrist during a drunken weekend party, and will be out for 6 to 8 weeks. Kristin, breaks a finger at training also putting her out for a few weeks. 

 

The coaching staff do a reshuffle bringing in a few junior players to fill the holes, and Alex is gifted a more attacking role given her experience and skill levels. 

 

Game 1 and everyone is excited, the new players are fitting in well and spirits throughout the team are high. Facing off against a challenging team, Alex takes on a more aggressive role. Involved in every play and attack, she continuously bombards the other team with powerful and precises attacks. They go into a tie breaker for the first set and Jasmine, sets the ball for Alex to strike. Jasmines inexperience cause the set to be poor and ends up almost directly above her, she struggles to get out of the way as Alex leaps for the shot. The shot goes deep and is returned, but as Alex lands from the shot she gets tangled with Jasmine. Her right foot lands on Jasmines left foot and rolls outwards violently under her whole body weight, unable to catch herself she collapses to the floor. Pain radiates from her ankle immediately, as she watches the ball get returned. 

 

Her instinct tells her to get up and move so the team can return the shot. She pulls herself standing and quickly realises her ankle is much worse than last time, unable to put any weight on it immediately, she hops around to try get out of the road. The team struggles with a soft return, which is then blocked to give the point to the other team. Andrew watches from the sidelines and can see that Alex is in distress. He springs to action, being the only trainer at the event today, with Sam attending with another player to the hospital. 

 

Jasmine goes to Alex’s aid and starts to apologise, “I’m so sorry Alex, I was trying to get out of the way but I couldn’t in time. Are you ok?”

 

Andrew signals to the referee to call a medical timeout as he makes his way onto the court, medical bag in hand. 

 

“It’s ok jasmine, accidents happen.”

 

Andrew reaches the girls on the court, and Alex is supporting herself leaning on Jasmine and Lara. Andrew takes a kneel to look at Alex’s right ankle, and immediately sees a large amount of swelling had already formed on the outer ankle. 

 

He stands back up and says, “That ankle is done Alex, let’s get you to the table straight away.”

Andrew and Lara help Alex off the court, hoping on her left foot slowly holding the right one up behind her. As they reach the side another player takes over from Lara so that she can get back to the game. They help Alex to the table and Andrew takes over. She helps Alex up on the table with her legs out straight. This time he goes straight for the shoe, loosening the laces and widening the shoe as much as possible. Slowly he supports the leg and starts to work the shoe off. Alex moans and winces in pain, clearly more painful that the last injury. 

 

The shoe breaks free and Andrew places it down before resting Alex’s foot back down gently. He takes out some scissors from his bag and starts to cut the sock off from the top down, slowly exposing her ankle and foot. Once the sock is cut away, the severity of the injury is very clear. There is a baseball sized lump on her outer ankle already. Andrew takes note that her toes are painted red this time and makes a comment to try cheer her up. “new Pedi I see,” Alex smiles through the pain and replies, “You just never know when you have to get your toes out, hehehe” and the two giggle for a moment. Andrew gets some ice and immediately places it on Alex’s ankle. They chat a little as Andrew tries to distract her from her ankle. After about 20 minutes, Andrew gets on the phone to Sam to tell him what’s happened. After a brief conversation he hangs up and tells Alex what Sam had said.

 

“So, I’m going to bandage and brace your ankle again, back on crutches and Sam wants you to go and see him in the morning for him to have a look.” 

 

‘Ok, I have some spare time between classes I go and see him first thing”

Andrew does as Sam instructed, he gently bandages Alex’s ankle and then fits the air cast stirrup to her ankle to secure it in place. Just as they finish Jasmine makes her way over, feeling terrible for what has happened, she offers to help Alex back to her room on campus. 

 

Alex more confident on crutches the second time around, has no problems navigating the way home, making light work of the stairs and settling into her room. 

 

“Are you sure there is nothing else I can do for you Alex, I feel so bad and I’m happy to help”, Jasmine comments as Alex takes a seat in her room. 

 

 “No really its fine Jasmine, it’s not your fault accidents happen. Thank you for helping me back to my room.”

 

The girls smile at each other and Jasmine exits the room. Alex goes about changing and showering, removing the bandage and brace before making her way to bed. She re-wraps the ankle in the bandage, neatly and then fits the air cast as instructed. She props her foot up on a pillow to try keep it elevated through the night. 

 

Exhausted from the days activity and the game, she falls to sleep reasonably quickly. At around 2 am she awakens to a pain in her ankle, it’s like someone is squeezing her ankle. She tries to reposition the pillow under her ankle, trying to keep it elevated as she lays there staring at the ceiling trying to get back to sleep. After about 30 minutes, the pain hasn’t eased so she decides to grab a few Advil. She turns on her lamp and gently lowers her foot down, before grabbing the crutches. She makes her way into the bathroom to get some Advil from the drug cabinet, and then takes a bottle of water and takes two tablets. She makes her way to the bed again and rests her foot back onto the bed. She slowly starts to nod off after about 20 minutes as the Advil starts to work and reduces the pain. 

 

6 am she awakens, and her ankle is aching again. She decides to get an early start and preps for the day. Going over some notes from her lectures yesterday. After having some breakfast, she gets dressed, wearing a knee length skirt, conservative top, ballet flat on her left foot and small white sock to cover her toes on her right foot. 

 

She heads out to her first class of the morning. 

 

At 10 am she has a break between classes for a study period, and she makes her way to the trainer’s room. As she makes her way into the office, she sees that the consult room door is closed, and can hear voices inside, so obviously Sam is with another client.

 

She takes a seat and rests the crutches down next to her whilst she waits, she grabs out her phone to check her Facebook page. After about 10 minutes, the door opens, and Sam exits the room closely followed by one of the senior volleyball girls. Sam shows her out and then turns to Alex. 

“So, I here you have injured that ankle again”

 

“Yes”, Alex replies and then goes on to tell him a bit about how it happened. She goes on to mention that its more painful this time and it woke her up through the night as well. 

“Ok let’s get you into the consult room and take a look. If you don’t mind Andrew should be here any moment, I’m going to get him to do the exam as well so he can brush up on his skills.”

 

“That’s fine”, Alex replies. Just as Alex stands up and settles on her crutches, Andrew walks in the door. 

“Ah speak of the devil”, Sam gestures. 

 

Andrew greets them both. “Can you take Alex into the room and get setup and I’ll just grab the file and will be with you in a minute”, Sam says to Andrew. 

 

He nods and then follows Alex into the room. 

Alex moves to the table, and places her crutches against the side, and then slides herself up on to the table with her leg straight out in front of her. Andrew notices the small white sock she is wearing and makes a comical gesture, “hiding the Pedi today?”

Alex smiles, “Well I can’t let everyone see my cute Pedi, that’s just for the trainers” the two have a smile and laugh together. 

Sam walks in, “Ok let’s get that ankle out and have a look”.

 

Andrew offers Alex some help, gently removing the thin white sock exposing her cute pedicured toes. Then the air cast gets removed followed by the bandage. As the last wrap of the bandage is removed, Sam moves in for a closer look. 

“Umm” Sam mumbles for a moment. 

 

Alex looks down at her ankle to see that it is quite swollen. The tennis ball sized lump had reduced overnight but the whole outside of her ankle was swollen now. There was some minor swelling on the inner side as well, and bruising showing below the outer ankle bone. 

 

Sam makes a few quick notes in Alex’s file. And then clears his throat, “Ok so what Andrew is now going to do is two tests, the anterior drawer test and the talar tilt test, this is aimed at testing the ligaments on the lateral side of the ankle”, As Sam points to Alex’s ankle. “the way this works is we will test the left ankle first, the uninjured one to get a baseline and then test the injured ankle. 

 

“Ok, that sounds fine.”

Alex moves her left foot towards her and flicks off her ballet flat, gently dusting off her soft sole, before straightening her leg back out. 

 

Andrew positions himself so that he can test Alex’s left ankle first. As her takes her foot in his hands he can’t help but notice how soft her foot is. He starts with the anterior drawer test and then the talar tilt test, while Sam makes a few notes about the movement in the good ankle. Andrew repositions himself and gently takes Alex’s right foot in his hands. 

“Ok if it becomes too painful just tell me to stop, ok. When I do the test if you have pain and discomfort point to where it is.”

Alex, nods “ok”

 

He gently starts the test moving her ankle as required to test the anterior ligament, after a few seconds, Alex tenses up, “ahh yup that’s quite painful” and points to where the pain is, directly on the location of the anterior ligament. 

Andrew releases her foot back to a neutral position and then starts the Talar tilt test. He does the talar tilt test with minimal discomfort to Alex until right at the end where she lets out a moan of pain. “That one hurt just under my ankle bone” Alex exhales. 

 

Andrew gently rests her foot down and makes a few observations of the swelling and bruising while Sam makes a few more notes. 

 

“Ok Andrew so what’s the verdict?” Sam asks. 

 

“Well the anterior drawer test showed some laxity, but quite minimal and the talar tilt test was negative. Looking at the swelling and bruising and result from the Anterior Drawer test I would say grade 2 partial anterior ligament tearing.”

 

Sam looks at his notes briefly, “ok That’s good. What would we do to check for a fracture?”

Andrew ponders his thoughts for a moment, “Ahh, yup, the Ottawa ankle rules.”

 

“Very good, ok let’s have a quick feel for a fracture.” And potions his hands on Alex’s ankle feeling along the bones either side of her lower leg starting at just below the knee. As he works his way down the fibula to the outer ankle bone, he encounters a little discomfort around the bone and swollen area.

 

“Ok Alex, one last thing I need to get you up on your crutches and see if you can bear any weight.”

 

“Ok, “Alex replies as she starts to position herself to get off the table. She slides down onto her left foot, and then positions her crutches. She lays her right foot just forward of her and flat on the ground and tries some weight standing still initially. She manages about 30% of her body weight, before pain starts to radiate from her ankle. “Ok let’s try two short steps”, Andrew comments.

 

Alex slowly transfer some weight to take the first step with the aid of her crutches, surprisingly to her she is able to take two steps, with about 30% of her body weight. 

“How does that feel” Andrew Ask. 

“Um its ok, more than I thought I would be able to do. A bit painful but not too bad.”

“ok that’s good, let’s get you back on the table and ill wrap the ankle back up.”

 

Sam makes a few notes while Andrew re-wraps Alex’s ankle, ensuring there are no wrinkles in the bandage and her toes and heel are left exposed. Then he fits the air cast stirrup and tightens up the Velcro. 

“Ok where do we go from here” Sam asks Andrew. 

“I suggest that Alex stays non weight bearing for the next 5 days and then we do a reassessment to see how its progressing.”

 

“Ok that’s great, sounds like your all over it. Must have had a good teacher, hahhaa” The three of them have a laugh. 

Sam makes sure Alex is happy with all that and then exits the room. Andrew helps her down off the table and passes her the crutches. 

 

Alex makes her way out of the room and then heads out of the office. Andrew takes a few moments with Sam, to cover the notes from the exam. 

 

Throughout the day, Alex’s ankle become more painful from having it down so much so she decides to skip her last class and just read over her text book in her room. She follows the trainer’s orders, over the next few days, and makes sure to keep her weight off the ankle. The swelling reduces fractionally, and the bruising starts to darken. But the pain has reduced by about 50%. 

 

Thursday evening Alex is at the gym, resting on the bench with her ankle up as the girls warm up for the night’s game. She has her ankle up on a chair in front of her elevating her ankle. Everyone checks in on her to see how she is going, including the coaching staff. They got the report from Sam and are glad it’s not too severe. Andrew wonders over and takes a seat next to her. “Hi Alex, how is everything going?”

“Oh, hey Andrew, I’m going well thanks. The ankle is feeling better, the pain has reduced a lot but it’s still quite swollen and bruising is getting darker.”

“Ok that’s pretty normal, and a sign its healing. The swelling may take a couple weeks to go completely. Try to keep it elevated as much as possible.”

“ok I will thank.”

 

They make some small chit chat, and Alex asks how his assessment with Sam went etc. During the conversation, Alex leans forward and removes the thin white sock from her right foot, letting her toes air out for a bit, not even realising what she was about to do. While they continue to chat, she wiggles her toes around, scrunches them up and spreads them out. Andrew can’t help but notice, and gazes at her toes. He is starting to realise that he may have a bit of a foot fetish for Alex, after all her toes and feet are so soft and beautiful. 

 

As the game gets under way, they continue to chat on and off, and Alex starts to notice Andrew looking at her toes, from time to time. She decides to test it out and removes her ballet flat from her let foot and places her let foot crossed slightly over her right leg. Andrew notices, mid-sentence and his brain starts to wonder, as he takes in the beauty of her left foot. Her arch is perfect, her soles are so soft, her painted toes. His mind starts to drift as he corrects himself, “’umm so as I was saying….”

 

Then within seconds there is a loud scream from the court. Riley has gone down clutching at her left leg. Before Andrew can get up, Sam is already rushing onto the court. Andrew grabs his bag and follows close behind. 

 

Alex tries to see what is going on, but the players and trainers are surrounding Riley as she lays on the court, screaming in pain. After about 10 minutes the players move away enough so that Alex can see what is going on. From a distance she notices, that Riley is still laying down. Sam in kneeling in front of Riley’s left foot, which looks like its twisted outwards at a very bad angle. About 5 mins later, an ambulance is heard outside the gymnasium, and a stretcher is wheeled in. They help to get riley onto the bed and then raise the bed to take her out to the ambulance. 

 

The crowd clears, and Sam stays with Riley as she is taken to the hospital. Andrew makes his way back over to Alex a few minutes later and places his bag down and takes a seat, as the team has a brief time out with the coaching staff. 

 

“What happened, is she ok?” Alex asks, hoping her team mate and the team’s best attacker isn’t badly injured. 

Andrew a little rattled from the event takes a breath. “It’s not good, looks like a compound fracture to her ankle. Her foot was twisted outwards at almost 90 degrees.”

 

“Oh, that’s terrible” Alex replies. 

The too sit in silence for a moment, as the mood is dampened by the news. The girls head back onto the court to continue with the game. Now missing their best attacker, they have little hope of winning the game. 

 

Some small talk, and Andrews phone rings after about 15 minutes. He answers, while Alex watches the game. “UH huh, yup, yup, ok I’ll go straight away as soon as the game finishes.”

And Andrew hangs up the phone. 

 

Andrew looks to Alex, “Well it looks like Riley is gone for the year, they are just doing x-rays and she will go straight into surgery tonight. Doc thinks it’s a double fracture of the tibia and fibula, just waiting to confirm with the x-ray.”

 

“Ah shoot, that’s terrible.”

 

The referee indicates the final point and the winners, and Andrew grabs his bag straight away. “Sorry Alex I have to go do some stuff for Sam straight away. I’ll see you on tomorrow at your follow up appointment with Sam.”

“Ok bye Andrew.” And Andrew rushes off with his bag. 

 

Alex spends a few moments with the team and the coaching staff after the game, as they talk about where they might go from here. Losing their best attacker is going to hurt the team. The coach pulls Alex aside for a few moments.

 

“How are you travelling with your injury Alex?”
“um ok so far, I have a follow up tomorrow, and have been non weight bearing all week.”

“Uh huh, ok, do you think you will be able to play by next week, we are going to really need your experience and skills out there.”

“I’m not sure I guess it depends what Sam has to say tomorrow.”

“Ok ill have a few words with Sam in the morning.”

“Ok” Alex replies as the team breaks apart and Alex decides to head to her dorm room. 

 

In the morning Alex makes her way to Sam’s office, at around 9am while she has some free time. Andrew is already in the consult room and invites her in straight away. All of a sudden, she can hear what appears to be Sam and the coach arguing with each other from Sam’s office. The words are muffled behind the closed doors, but it doesn’t sound like a happy conversation. Andrew helps Alex onto the table and removes the brace and bandage as they wait for Sam. After a few minutes, Sam’s office door swings open and the coach storms out. 

 

Sam makes his way into the consult room. 

 

“Bloody coaches think they own this place. It infuriates me. They do what they want and think they just tell everyone how it’s going to be. ARRHHHH”

 

“Sorry, that’s my rant. So how are you going Alex?”

“Good thanks Sam.”

“Ok let’s take a look at this ankle”. Sam moves in for a look, the swelling is down quite a bit now although still swollen around the outer ankle mainly. The bruising is still a dark shade of purple just below the outer ankle area. Sam gets Alex to move her ankle around a bit in all directions. “how does that feel?”

“it’s ok, it quite stiff though and a bit painful pulling my toes back and twisting them inwards.”

“ok let’s get you up and see how you go with weight bearing”

Andrew moves forward to help Alex up on her crutches. She moves forward a little and then tries some weight, managing about 60% weight stationary. She then takes about 4 steps as she moves around the room, able to bare about 50% of her weight while using the crutches for support. 

“Ok how’s weight bearing feel?”

“My ankle feels really stiff, and it hurts a bit as the foot flexes when I step but not too bad.”

“Ok back up on the table” Sam grabs a few items and returns to Alex. 

 

“Ok what I want you to do is start weight bearing, make sure you have the ankle bandaged and brace on as before. 3 times a day you need to do some exercises to help rebuild the range of motion and strength. Sam shows her the exercises. He shows her the alphabet exercise, basically writing the alphabet with her toes in the air, then some resistance band exercises, and talks about doing heel raises as well.

“Ok so what I want is for one of your exercise sessions to be with Andrew I don’t care if it’s here or somewhere else, but I want a detailed report from you Andrew on the progress.”

 

Alex and Andrew both agree. 

Sam turns to Andrew “Do you mind stepping out for a moment, it’s not personal it’s just what I’m about to ask Alex is not a habit I want you to follow”.

 

A little confused Andrew leaves the room. 

“Well you obviously heard that the coach and I were having some words before. He was telling me that he wants you to play on Wednesday night’s game. I don’t think you are ready, and I told him you need another week, but he thinks he knows that he can pull his weight around here because of his position. I said I would not recommend it to you but would ask anyways. So, I don’t think you are ready for at least another week but it’s your call. If you decide to play we will look at two light sessions Monday and Tuesday night and I will tape your ankle and also provide you with a brace for added support.”

 

Alex thinks about it for a moment and knows that her team needs her and doesn’t want to let the team down. “umm, ok I will work at playing Wednesday.”

 

“Ok I thought you might say that. I will work a plan with Andrew, you do your exercises and start getting some weight on that ankle and Monday night we will see how you go at training ok”

 

“Ok”

 

Sam opens the door and calls Andrew in, “I leave it with you to organise the exercise sessions”

Sam leaves the office puts the file down on his desk and then leaves the office. Andrew a little unsure of what was said, is curious. 

Andrew helps her to re-bandage her ankle and put the brace on, wondering what was going on. “Um, is everything ok? I mean you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to”

 

Alex smiles, thinking she can have a little fun with him. “oh, its nothing much really, Sam just wanted to know if I would go on a date with him.”

 

Andrews jaw drops to the floor, not sure what to say… knowing that Sam is happily married well he thought so anyways. “Umm, ok.”

 

Silence fills the room. 

 

Alex starts to laugh, hehehe, “Ya goose, he didn’t ask me out. Hehehe”

The look of relief on Andrews face was priceless. 

“He just said that the coach wants me to play on Wednesday but he thought I wasn’t ready, but he was leaving it up to me.”

“hahaha, ok that was a bit awkward for a moment, hahaha” they both laugh. 

“So are you going to play?” Andrew asks. 

“yes, I want to, but I’ll see how I feel at training on Monday night.”

“ok then so when do you want to do the exercises together?”

“um well if you want I’m in room number 405 at the south block. Come up after 4 pm and we can do them then.”

 

“ok that sounds great.”

 

Alex leaves her white sock off her right foot so she can start putting some weight on her ankle as she leaves the office. Andrew follows behind briefly before they part ways. 

 

As organised Andrew visits her in at her room that afternoon and they go through the exercises, keeping his notes for Sam. By the Saturday night session, Alex has regained a lot of range of motion, a mixture of the exercises and the weight bearing has helped to free up her ankle. She is also walking unassisted, still with a moderate limp but improving daily. 

 

Monday night arrives and she shows up for training dressed in her training kit.  She heads to see Sam and Andrew straight away at the trainer’s station. Sam gets Alex to get up on the table and gets her to remove her shoe and sock, and then does a few tests on her ankle, noting that the range of motion was much better but still somewhat limited. She had some pain from the anterior ligament when flexed in certain positions. He opens a box and pulls out a black sports ankle brace, fairly rigid but flexible enough to not restrict to much movement. He shows her how to fit it and tighten the straps. The brace is black and slides on like a sock and then has two wrap around Velcro straps that loop over her ankle in a figure 8 style to provide the support. It is fitted over her sock and then she puts her shoe on and tightens up the laces. 

 

She doesn’t train with the rest of the team and instead goes through some movement exercises with Sam and Andrew, some small jumps and side to side movements. After about 60 minutes they take her back to the table and she removes the brace and her sock. Sam has a quick look at her ankle. The swelling hadn’t increased which was good although her outer ankle was still quite swollen. The bruising still very evident as well. He goes through a few tests and range of motions exercises and then grabs and ice pack for her ankle. “How did you feel tonight? Sam asks Alex.

 

“it felt ok, it started to get a little sore towards the end and just rebuilding my confidence with certain movements, but all in all it feels ok.”

“ok well as I said before I think it’s too early but if you want to play, I will give the coach the go ahead tonight and we will training again tomorrow night and then game on Wednesday.”

 

“Ok great, I think I’m ready to get back out there.”

She ices her ankle for 20 minutes while chatting to Andrew. And then heads off for the night.