In the mean time...

When you are young and poor - you may find yourself in a similar situation as me. A situation where, in an effort to save money during the school year, you paid for cheaper health insurance than Metro offers to save money. If you find yourself in this situation, do exactly as I didn't, maintain that health insurance at whatever cost. Otherwise, if you are also adventurous, you may find yourself in my current situation, with an injury and without health insurance (opps!).

As I've been tending to an ankle injury for most of the summer; friends, friend's parents, my parents, shoe-sales people and strangers alike have been quick to offer unsolicited advice as to how to tend to my injury. While I appreciate most of their input and have followed-up on many of their recommendations (considering that most of the advice has been echoed by numerous people) - I've come to develop a repertoir of my own. If you, fellow Metro student (or prospective Metro student, as it were) find yourself in just my situation with a similar injury or are simply sick of doctors trying to treat the symptoms instead of healing the whole body - then consider the words I am about to offer you.

I will give you fair warning: I AM NOT a medical professional or a healer of any kind, but I will try to give you an honest impression of my experiences with these healing methods while trying not to bore you.

R.I.C.E. This was the first program reccomended to me.

Rest: Definitely the most difficult, but the most rewarding. When you injure yourself - take it easy (don't be dumb and push yourself the second you start to heal - opps).

Ice: This reduces the swelling and is good for a fresh injury, but will make the area incredibly stiff - so I found it best to massage the injury lightly after each icing.

Compression: This reminds you that you're injured and is helpful as long as the compress doesn't cause you pain.

Elevation: This method works wonders for people that can pull it off, I would not (however) recommend this if you've injured your legs and are hitch-hiking.

Heat: Opens the area up and is best for old injuries.

Homeopathy: Works if you believe it will (banks on the placebo effect) - but has no more healing capabilities than a water filled pill.

Accupuncture: Really awesome for relaxation and pain relief as well as other forms of healing, but I wouldn't reccomend accupuncture for pronated arches and mis-aligned legs. Also, the needles don't hurt AT ALL

Vitamins and Eating Healthy: Speeds up the healing process. Really do you honestly believe fast food and soda are good for your immune system?

Massage: Amazing pain relief that offers no long term fix.

Custom Inserts & New Shoes: By far, the best affordable treatment that I've found. The brand of inserts that I have are "Super Feet," they work wonders and they're pretty cheap (compared to orthodic inserts).

Rolfing: Seems to be the best approach for fixing allignment issues, but is also quite pricey (so I'll be saving for it). Rolfing is a deep tissue (read - painful) massage that seeks to realign how your muscles sit on your bones in about 10 sessions. Imagine grabbing your misalligned muscles and moving them permanantly to their proper place - yowza!

Free Clinics w/ Doctor's who don't know anything about ankle injuries: While these clinics and doctors rock for offering services to the poor - I would skip them.

Cortozone Shots: No thank you!

Until next week....