Reply #18: When I severely sprained (rolled) my ankle, the doctor told me I would have been better

[Ghost in the Machine]

off if I had broken it, that it was worse than a break and would take longer to heal with the pulled muscles, ligaments and tendons.

Sorry, I don't have the info you're looking for, but just passing along that sometimes a sprain is worse than a break.

Maybe they just say "broke" his ankle to show the severity of it... afterall, 'broke' does sound worse than 'severely sprained', doesn't it?

I can understand them doing that because I go through it myself. When I talk about my disabling accident at work, I just say "I fell off a roof and broke my neck", although I didn't really "break" my neck. It's just easier & quicker than to explain that I fell off a roof, tried to land on my feet, but went down hard on my ass, causing my spine to compress, which caused a tear in my spinal cord which allowed my cerebrospinal fluid to leak inside my spinal cord, causing a liquid filled cyst, also known as a syrinx, to form inside my spinal cord, destroying it from the inside out as it grew. They had to totally take my neck apart by cutting the vertebra, taking the tops off, lifting my spinal cord up so they could take the bottom pieces out and then shave the insides of my vertebra to make them wider because my spinal cord was so swollen that it was pressing against the insides of the vertebra, causing me partial paralysis. They also had to detach my spinal cord from the vertebra in a couple places where it had grown to the bone. Oh.. they also had to drain the syrinx... and *that* was just the first operation...

See, it's just easier to say "I fell and broke my neck"...

I understand your original reasonings for your question though...