I had begun working at a juice bar as a fun temporary summer job. All my coworkers were lovely people and to welcome me to the job, they insisted that we all go dancing. At the start of the night I skipped the last step to the dance floor and landed squarely on my ankle, inversion injury, ankle sprain. Ignoring my pain and discarding the seriousness of the mechanism of injury, I proceeded to dance the night away.

I have experienced many instances of acute pain, accompanying tissue damage. After a short period of healing life returns to normal and I soon forget how uncomfortable and scared I felt living with what seemed a constant nagging pain. After the initial injury and in the days following, I remember feeling afraid. I was in disbelief. How could I have sustained an injury this serious, not wanting to except how much I was hurting.

The next day I went to work and walked on my sprained ankle all day worsening my injury, still in denial that I was hurting. That night I put my feet up and noted that my ankle had doubled in size. That was when I took the ankle sprain seriously and began icing and resting (P.R.I.C.E.)

Nociceptors in the affected area detect inflammation, the chemotaxis of cells or organisms directed by the immune system as a means of damage control, alert these receptors sending a signal along the spinal cord to the brain with the resultant perception of pain. These feelings are all normal as your body sends signals to rest, discontinue all activity and heal. If the brain does not receive the proper signals to slow the body down, we may continue to cause more damage unintentionally.

I had not processed the initial injury and I refused to listen to my body, dancing through the night and working through the day. I had to take it easy that summer. I gained greater insight into the lives of those that suffer with chronic pain, building an understanding and empathy towards people who are hurting.