Self healing

It's the second time of my life without formal medical insurance, this time unlikely to afford services. When I sprained my ankle last Friday, I felt a bit nervous about the fall-out. While I didn't have to move and had access to the web, I investigated Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) approaches to help myself, while cooling my ankle.

The western approach is RICE: Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation. While I did this for a couple of hours after the injury, pain prevented me from putting weight onto my left foot. I managed to fall, using both feet reflexively, ending up in agonising pain for some minutes. Back home, dedicated to more rest, treatment and less danger of re-injury I had some food and did a moxa treatment afterwards.

Around the ankle, I wasn't too precise with the point selection, the swelling was noticeable, luckily not too severe. Using heat to dissipate the heat of the inflammation seems at first counter-intuitive, but swelling builds up useless fluids preventing the flow of blood, lymph and chi in the area. While I was still very careful with using my left leg, I had a impression of slightly lesser swelling, less pain and little bit more stability.

On the day after I repeated the moxa treatment, and limped through the day. I remembered having some tiger balm, and used it later in the day to continue the heat treatment. As I was still wearing a bandage, tiger balm felt more convenient than moxa. I avoided walking long distances, spend the day at home and next door. While slow, I managed to lug around boxes, and hardly ever stepped the wrong painful way.

Two days later I did my first longer walk, really slow, although just mentally painful. I noticed each change in elevation, lots of them along only two blocks. I took the tram for two stops, getting in and out wasn't too tricky with the low-floor wagon. While I felt desperate for crutches on Friday, my confidence to move around the hood without too much pain grew.

I spend most of Sunday reading on the front porch, and chatting with some neighbours, when I got the inspiration to google comfrey. Bingo. A miracle herb, great for healing bruises, sprains and soreness. Initially, I just took a leaf and rubbed it around the ankle until the juices tinged the skin greenish. I don't care whether I activated the placebo effect, yet another improvement was noticeable.

I took another longer walk on Monday, no tram this time and slightly faster, yet still limping. I stopped wearing the bandage, and felt much less impaired by the injury than before. I managed climbing awkward stairs and ladders, and lugging heavy things around.

After some more research into comfrey and how it's used I decided to do another experiment. I blended some comfrey, a bit of rosemary (both fresh) with coconut and olive oil. Without bees wax, it's not a real salve, and the moisture of the fresh plants might attract mould and bacteria. For now, I'n not worried, as I used it immediately. I didn't filter the plant material out, about 50% the skin of the area affected is covered with the liquid oil.

A bit of Qi Gong standing on the lawn didn't evoke pain and required only little effort. The bandage mainly holds the comfrey paste in place. I plan to use up the small amount I made in the next few days, with a more generous application before going to bed. So far, I'm surprised about the fast recovery. Straight after the accident I was concerned how this would affect my everyday affairs. Now I'm hoping to be back on a unicycle already next week.

While my financial situation deserves the label 'sub-optimal', the abundance of resources available to me at the moment - information on the web, some plants in the front yard - provide for what's needed for good solutions to urgent challenges.