Lateral ankle fracture (old) + sprain (new)

Hi Guys,

First post on here, what a useful site :)

I'm after a little bit of info about an injury I have. I recently (around 4 weeks ago) went over on my ankle whilst out running the hills and it went with a loud pop. My foot was flat or slightly dorsiflexed at the time and the painful area was to the rear of the malleolus and directly below it (CFL?). Later that day it swelled up a fair bit but I was still able to weightbear and continued my run albeit a little gently. I did the usual RICE which worked fine and around a week later I was able to train again. I've since run a 10 mile race and got a personal best which didn't seem to aggravate the injury a great deal. So I assumed all was well.

However, I went over on it again at work yesterday and have now injured the front ligament (ATFL?) and reinjured the rear again. It swelled up quite a lot again so I went to the minor injuries unit to get it checked and they found an old avulsion fracture on the base of the lateral malleolus where the bone is clearly separated and only held in place by soft tissue.

My question is this, they told me it was old and didn't think it could've been the first sprain but was probably months or years old. Thing is, I don't ever remember injuring that ankle in the past so I can't work out what's going on.

Any ideas?

By the sounds of it this happened during the original injury and is typical when you hear/feel a 'Pop'. Immobilization in a cast at the time sometimes might assist if the ends approximate but really there is no fix for that other than surgical. The result of the injury is that the ligament connection to the brain is reduced and you will be more prone to recurrent sprains. The best thing is to get in to a local physio to learn some proprioceptive retaining exercises for the lower limb as a whole.

Best of luck :)

That was what I thought but the x ray people said there was calcification or something that suggested it was an old injury.

Thanks for your help, I'm currently in the process of making a wobble board to help retrain my balance and I'm waiting on a gp referral to get either some physio or a foot and ankle specialist to look at it so when that happens I'll know more :)