How do you know if you sprained your ankle?

Go to the doctor. They may need to take an x-ray to make sure you haven’t broken anything.

In my experience….sprains hurt like hell….I mean screaming and swearing kind of hurt…will start to swell pretty quickly and the pain is managed well with icing the injured ankle. I have never broken an ankle but everyone I have talked with that has says breaking it doesn’t hurt as much.

Now forget you read anything here at all and go see a Doc….let the pro tell you what you did!!

You probably need to have an xray to rule out a break.

Then if you sprained it, you need to stay off of it, ice it, wrap it and elevate it!

You should get checked out. I broke my foot walking off a curb this summer and didn’t go to the doctor for 10 days…and by that time the break was very bad and displaced and required surgery. Probably wouldn’t have if I would have just went to the doctor in the first place….and…it didn’t hurt much. It was just swollen.

I also think you need to see a doctor.
@Cruiser I have had a very bad sprain, and yes it hurt like heck and there was no way I could have put any weight at all on it. There are different kinds and degrees of sprains, just like there are different kinds of breaks. I also broke that same ankle. A Trimalleolar fracture that had my foot hanging sideways and needed surgery. Also no way I could put any kind of weight on that mess. The pain from that break was indeed much worse that the bad sprain. But like @deni I also know of people would walked around on a fractured foot. So I guess it just depends!

@wilma I guess it does depend…of the 3 sprains I have had they all were off the charts painful and when I had a 3,000 lb machine fall on and smash my foot and some bones in the process didn’t hurt that much in comparison.