In late October DS(15) sprained his ankle. Not much swelling, no pop, ankle went inwards, the ligament you can feel under the outside of the ankle is the one affected.
After a month we went to our podiatrist because DS already has poor biomechanics and wears orthotics. Podiatrist confirmed that the ankle was "stuck" in the injured position and manipulated the soft tissue to release it. DS1 has been religiously doing exercises to keep the range of motion.
The podiatrist likes to take himself very seriously but even he said "only come back if you need to" so we were sure we were on the road to recovery.
It's now at the point where if he is sedentary (or walks 100 yards) there's no pain but if he does anything more than that he feels it pretty quickly.
Podiatrist says to wear an anklet with no heel. DS tried one and disliked it.
but this is where our history comes in. When he was younger he wore a knee support for several weeks and this was a disaster (weakened the muscle above the knee and made the knee issues worse). So now we are a bit scared of bracing.
I know it's "just" a sprained ankle (probably just grade 1) but he's down because of wanting to get back to sport and dreading a long-drawn-out period of not being able to do it (as we had before).
We're scared of getting it wrong.
We like our podiatrist (he was the only one who figured out how to cure the knee pain after several other medics were not able to) but he is a bit full of himself so he makes us a bit more stressed. The GPs, in contrast, just say "oh keep playing rugby on it, it's good for your heart" etc. We are a bit reluctant to trust GPs on musculoskeletal things because we think the podiatrists/physios and osteos know more.
Any stories or advice would be gratefully received.