cwh2- What exercises did the PT suggest?
Never did the alphabet ones, but moving the foot with resistance and without did help to get ROM and strength back.
After that, standing barefoot on one foot, improves everything that the ankle does in real life. That was surprisingly difficult to do after the injury. Once that gets easy enough that you can balance on one foot for 1-2 minutes, try doing the same on your toes, or flat-footed while doing something that distracts your mind out of "balance" mode. Lots of variations on that one, one of which was to toss a ball up in the air with one hand and catch it in the other, another was partial squats on the injured leg. After that gets easy, start closing your eyes. Just something to make balance more difficult, and increase the activity at that joint.
Anything you can do to actually use the ankle as it is designed (side-hill in xtra-tuffs) will make it stronger.
The more important thing that I guess I got out of PT was to abandon the "take it easy on your injury" mindset. He basically told me that the damage was done, and that after a certain amount of PT, just let her rip. You need to use it to make it stronger. Essentially, that it was just pain, and to not be a pussy.
Every situation is different, and I'm not a doctor, nor did I stay in a holiday inn last night. Hence, if you have chronic ankle pain, I'll repeat my recommendation to go see a physical therapist.
