Last summer DH fell from a height and sprained his ankle. They x rayed him at A&E and showed no breakage so he was on crutches for a week and then did the physio exercises they gave him. He kept it up for a couple of months but then a lot of very stressful life stuff came up which made him often skip physio, and he fell out of the practice of it, and by then he was capable of being on his feet all day so it was easy just to stop. A year on from the sprain he decided he should start doing physio again because he still felt unstable, but the exercises increased his pain. He went to the GP who put him on a waiting list to see a physio, and told him the ligaments may have healed poorly due to not keeping up with the physio, and his ankle may not go back to normal. DH said his goal was to be able to go running again and the GP gave him a look like that's very ambitious. We have no idea how long the wait for a physiotherapist will be but probably more than 6 months away. DH has been doing exercises the GP gave him and has kept it up twice a day for a couple of months now. While his stability and range of motion has improved, his pain is worse than before he re-started the exercises. The GP said it was fine to push through moderate pain to do exercises but DH is very dispirited that the pain isn't improving at all. He says he feels like he's dealing with a chronic pain condition now because he's in pain every day. And because he hasn't seen a specialist he has no idea what he should be doing and he doesn't know whether his ankle will be like this forever, it's depressing him. We can't afford to go private so we'll just be waiting several more months for an appointment. Has anyone been in this situation before?