Jordan's Sprained Ankle

I can't forget to tell you this story. It also happened in the last few weeks of Arkansas. Jordan was out fishing and helping with some chores around the ranch when he misplaced his foot in a hole covered by leaves. It resulted in a horrible sprain. I mean if you look at the picture below you will really understand. It was already starting to bruise on his hobble back to the house. The bad news was that he had to work the next evening and he couldn't call off work becase we had just got home from our trip to Kauai. So it was time to enter into the world of all the things I had been reading and things that Wendy had been teaching me in herbal medicine. (I can't say I was happy that he sprained his ankle but I was very excited to play doctor with all these new tricks I had just read about!)

The result was miraculous really, that is why I have to share!

The Foot!!!!! It was pretty bad....

First, we heated up some hot water (as hot as he could stand) and mixed it with apple cider vinegar. He soaked his foot in that until it would cool to room temperature, usually about 15-20 minutes. After that we iced it for ten minutes. We repeated this a few times. This took the swelling and pain away pretty quickly.

Second, we made a fomentation and wrapped up his ankle. (Basically that means we took hot water and Dr. Christopher's Bone, Flesh and Cartilage Herbs and made a strong tea.) While that was heating up I put cayenne oil on Jordan's foot to enhance circulation and help absorption of the herbs in the fomentation. I then took strips of muslin/cheese cloth and dipped in the super hot tea and wrapped it around his foot. After the entire area was covered I wrapped it all in saran wrap to keep from dripping everywhere. We left it on for the next eight hours while he was sleeping.

Applying Fomentation: strips of cheese cloth dipped into strong tea of Dr. Christophers BF&C herbs

Wrapped in plastic wrap

We added a ziplock back over just to catch any drips and then wrapped that with a heating pad (that lasts for 8 hours)

In the morning there was no swelling and the bruising that appeared the night before was gone. We did another fomentation wrap in the morning. By afternoon he was able to walk on it with a little limp. The night before he couldn't put any weight on his foot.

So before he had to go to work we put Arnica oil all over his foot with an ankle brace. He made it through his entire eight hour shift less than 24 hours after this initial incident!!! 

I couldn't believe it. His ankle was still sore for the next few days so we repeated the process everyday with the apple cider vinegar, BF and C fomentation and Arnica oil. By the end of the week he was walking without a limp at all and in two weeks time he was pretty much back to his normal self.