The boot · My Broken Ankle Journey

The good news is no more cast. But I'd have to use a boot to start walking again.

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The cam boot

After the stitches came out, and I was left with just a bandage to wear, my doctor’s office issued me a boot. I don’t have an image of my exact one - we threw it away as soon as I didn’t need it anymore - but it looked like the image above. It was black, went up to just under the knee, had several velcro straps, and a tall rounded rubber sole.

I was told to, over the course of two weeks, and while wearing the boot, to gradually go into full weight bearing.

I was scared and excited.

So for those next couple of weeks, I used crutches while also letting my foot touch the ground and do a fake walking movement. That felt great to do just on its own instead of always having to hold my foot off the ground. At the end of those two weeks, I was actually walking around my house - it was surreal!

The boot has extra rubber on the bottom of it and it caused my right leg to be much taller than my left, so I was either walking with a limp, or walking with my left foot on tiptoes in order to counter the height of the booted foot. (This is while wearing a shoe on my left foot, too. That boot caused me to be that much taller.)

Fortunately some company made something for this called the ‘EvenUp’. It straps onto the bottom of my tennis shoe and makes that shoe bottom a bit taller, therefore allowing me to ‘even up’ my leg heights. Walking was much more comfortable for me that way. I highly recommend this.

Running shoe strapped into an EvenUp shoe balancer with layered foam soles

Made walking in the boot feel like natural walking rather than limpingEvenUp shoe balancerStraps onto the bottom of your regular shoe so it matches the height of the boot. No more limping or tiptoeing on your good foot, and it comes with extra layers so you can pick what height works for your shoe and boot.Find it on Amazon

In the package there are multiple layers of the EvenUp, so you can adjust it for how much evening up you need.

I used this the entire time I was in the boot.

It looked like this:

A cam boot on one foot and a sneaker strapped into an EvenUp on the other, bringing both to the same height

In addition to this, I also wanted tall socks to wear on the foot with the boot, as I had to wear that cam boot pretty snug and it was right on my skin until I got socks that helped.

Tall white sock liners, one worn under a black cam walking boot

Kept the boot off my skinWalking boot sock linersTall, soft socks made to go under a cam boot. The boot has to be strapped on snug, and these keep it from rubbing right against your leg all day.Find it on Amazon

Overall I was thrilled to be mobile, even if I had to wear a boot. Fortunately that was just a few weeks. My doctor had a second surgery to remove some screws (still a little weird that had to happen, but I guess some doctors do that), and he said, “I’m going to write you a prescription for some aggressive physical therapy to get you going again.”