Anatomy of a sprain

This whole ankle thing has been kind of interesting. It's taking longer to heal than I thought, and I'm having some cool symptoms. It got all swollen, of course, which I expected. Within a couple of days of the fall, the bottom part of my foot started to show bruises. A couple of days later, my toes actually started to bruise, even though they weren't involved at all in the accident. I thought that was really weird, but it's right in line with what I've been reading. All the loose blood that's sloshing around in my foot has to go somewhere, and it gets sucked down by gravity.

Turns out that sprains are grouped into three levels of severity. Mine is a grade 2, which is moderate. It means I tore the ligaments partially but not completely. (Thank heaven, because a complete tear would probably require surgery.) The bruise pattern is typical of a grade 2 sprain. I just need to give it a while to get better. We were thinking of starting our ski season tomorrow, but now it's going to have to wait a little. That's not so bad; it's been a busy week.