It woke me up from my sleep. Something wasn’t right with my left leg. The pain was of an intensity that I don’t believe I had ever felt before. Sure, I have suffered from muscle cramps before and they can be pretty painful. Twist the wrong way and some muscle group or another goes into spasm–a big hard lump in the calf or a knot in the arch of the foot. Painful, yes, but some firm pressure on the knot and extension of the affected muscle group usually bring relief in a minute or two.

The situation at 12:30 this morning was something else entirely. The pain moved through my leg in waves, and I realized that my left ankle was locked in full flexion, my toes pointing to my knees. The muscles pulling the ankle into the flexed position just would not relax.  I tried rolling from left to right, hoping a change in position would break the spasm, but that didn’t help.

I thought if I got out of bed I could “walk it off,” but I couldn’t get that left foot down on the ground to support my weight. My first step was my last as I barely caught the dresser to keep from falling on my butt.

“What’s wrong,” Barb, awake now too, asked.

I told her of my agony. She tried to get me to relax, tried bending my ankle into a more neutral position. It wasn’t moving. Slowly she moved her hand up my leg, feeling the extreme tenseness of the whole group of muscles that control ankle flexion–the gastrocnemius and soleus among others. Then she began to massage, beginning at the ankle and then with steady pressure moving up to the mid-calf, where the pain was now centered.

Slowly, slowly, slowly, the pain eased and I began to regain function of my ankle.  My cries of pain turned into mere whimpers. Within a few minutes, I was able to fall back asleep and woke this morning without any residual pain.

I’m not sure what set off those nasty muscles. I had a bit of “something” over the weekend, perhaps a reaction to a flu vaccine shot, perhaps something more contagious. Maybe it was a response to my personal marathon. Any of those could have set me up for that cramp. Or maybe it was none of them.

But as I drifted back to sleep last night I remembered to tell Barb that “there are a million good reasons that I married an occupational therapist.” And I meant it!

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photo credit: Medical Heritage Library, Inc. This image is taken from Page 463 of Rest and pain : a course of lectures on the influence of mechanical and physiological rest in the treatment of accidents and surgical diseases, and the diagnostic value of pain via photopin (license)