A Friend with Hurt Ankle

Your best bet is to simply make her comfortable.

If she won't listen to reason what can you do? She has a legitimate fear, and I would respect that.

And at this point even if she went and had it x-rayed and a fracture was confirmed they're not going to cast it, it's been too long, it has to be done within so many hours, if it is fractured it has already begun to set. I learned this when my niece fell over a fence (trying to get into the back of the house because she had lost her key) and broke her foot, but could not get up and laid there for many hours until someone came home. They had to re-break it to set it.

As Kristina said, keep her comfortable.

Well... If she has broken it before, she probably knows better than you how it would feel if it was in fact broken again.

I know that I get VERY annoyed when I tweak my arm (which has been broken 2x, in 6 different places, requiring several surgeries, 2 rods, and 11 pins to hold it all together.) and people try to pressure me into getting it looked at. I KNOW what it feels like when it is injured, and while it DOES hurt, and swell up, and look nasty, that is just the side effects of the old injuries. I do NOT have the money to spend getting it looked at every time it gets tweaked.

That said, if her ONLY argument is that she doesn't want the cast (As in, 'I know it might be broken, but I'm scared of the cast' vs. 'It's FINE! I don't need to get a cast!') then I would do what Kristina says... Make her comfortable for now. IF her ankle is really hurt, before too long the pain will be bad enough that she won't have much choice but to get it looked at. The first time I broke my arm, I went for 3 days before going to the doctor. (I didn't want to tell my dad because I wasn't sure I broke it, and because I was doing something I was told not to, which is what caused the break. lol.) By the 3rd day, my arm was so bruised, swollen, and painful that I couldn't hide it any more. My dad took me to the ER, where they x-rayed it and discovered my first 2 breaks, set one break and pinned the other, casted it, and sent us home.

I sprain my ankles at least once a year, have snapped the end off my tibia, and had a lot of smaller fractures.

I basically ignore them and gimp about. If the pain stays high for 2 weeks or so, I go get xrayed. (Breaks are grand, they heal in 6-8 weeks, instead of 3-6 months... But the pain is higher in the beginning as the bones rub on each other. It can be hard to tell the difference, though, in the first couple weeks, unless it's a compound fracture).

When you're used to chronic injuries you treat yourself differently than people do who aren't. As long as shes not acting like a lunatic mosning anf wailing (chronic injury people usally just blow it off)... Just trust that she knows her body well enough to deal with it.