Friday, February 23, 2007

Suspected Stress Fracture :(

Soooo... after yet another day of fairly constant aching/throbbing foot pain I caved in and went to the podiatrist. She said that she thinks I may well have a stress fracture of one of the sesamoid bones (which, as far as I can gather, are the two little knobs of bone that hold one of the tendons in place)

This means an xray, then possibly another in a few weeks. She wants me to have the first xray to check it isn't a more serious (splinter?) fracture first, even though if it is a SF, it's probably not going to show up on the initial xray.

This means I'm looking at at least another week with no running, then if it is a SF, another five. Waaaaaaaa. *bangs head against keyboard* I nearly cried. Only time will tell, I guess. I'm trying not to get depressed about this until I know what I'm looking at.

She taped a pad to my foot to take some of the pressure off which instantly felt heaps better walking around. I'm supposed to ice it every day, too.

Bugger, bugger, bugger.

6 comments:

Ralf M said...

Sorry to hear that!

Could be worse, not that that really every helps. A friend of mine's partner had a horse step on her foot, which tore out a bit of bone (the tendon was stronger than the bone it was connected to) with only very minor laceration of the skin, but enough for the bone to get infected. Ugh ... serious pain and recovery issues!

Do you think the fracture has come from issues with how you run? It is always one problem that I worry about when I go for a run...

R

Robert Song said...

That is bad news. Get into the cross training as you don't want to lose your fitness. And get to the cause of the problem, so it won't happen again.

Shane said...

Good to hear that you went and seen someone sooner rather than attempting to run anymore. Hopefully it is not as serious as it sounds. Take it easy.

Ewen said...

And bugger from me Hannah. At least you'll know for sure what you're dealing with.

Cross train when you can (water running, swimming) if it's a stress fracture. You'll be back running before you know it.

Tesso said...

Bugger bugger bugger alright :-(

As the others have said get some serious cross training done. Water running may be boring as hell but it really does help keep you fit and burn calories. Trust me, I did it for more than two months. I will forward on a pgm to you that Lulu sent me.

Meanwhile, chin up. At least with as stressie you can do something. There are other injuries that you can't even walk with!

Clairie said...

Hannah, that is really bad news.

My personal opinion is that I would not bother with the xray. Just get the MRI done first. It shows muscle AND bone injuries. A bone scan only shows bone stress and an xray may or may not show anything depending on how the bone is healing already.

The downside to the MRI is that can cost $200-300. But if they do the xray and then another (both around $80-120 each) you might as well do the MRI.

Hope it goes well whatever you choose and you get the foot diagnosed.

BTW I was told that a bone stress fracture in the foot is likely to be the 4th metatarsal - this is the most common one.

Google foot+stress+fracture and do some reading. It may help you agree/disagree that this is potentially what you have.