My Trip to the Podiatrist

So yesterday I went to the podiatrist just to get an idea of what was going on with my foot. I was almost embarrassed when he started asking me how long has it been painful. The big toe has hurt for about two years now and the Plantar Fascittis has been around for about 7 years. No doctor, I never had them checked out before, because the pain was never really delibilitating, just kind of annoying. The pain still isn't really that bad, I just want to know what I'm dealing with. So he decides to take some X-rays to see what's going on.

While I'm sitting in the room waiting for the x-rays to develop, I must admit I was feeling a little nervous. I wasn't nervous about there being anything seriously wrong. I can deal with that. I was actually worried that he wouldn’t find anything. I was really hoping he wasn't going to say, it looks like you have a severe case of wussyitis. Take two man pills and call me in the morning. So I was somewhat relieved when he came in the room and said, why don't you come with me. I want to show you some things on the x-ray. You have a lot of stuff going on.

Basically, he told me that I have a runner's foot. He said a lot of things were kind of to be expected when you pound on your feet day after day. However, there were some shocking things in there too. This is what he found:

1. Bunion on the big toe
2. "Arthritic conditions" in the big toe
3. Bone spur on the top of the big toe
4. Bone Spur on the bottom of the big toe
5. Floating cartilage above the 3rd toe, the result of a strangely healed stress fracture which I never knew I had
6. plantar fasciitis
7. Heel Spur
8. I had a break in my ankle at some point fairly recently, and it healed funny. I never knew I broke my ankle.

So his suggestion for treatment was basically just stretching for the plantar fasciitis. He said that he thought if I did a better job of stretching the calves, that would loosen up the achilles, which in turn would help the plantar fascia. Makes sense. I don’t stretch much, so I can handle that. For the bunion, the floating cartilage, and all the bone spurs, he suggested tha I have an outpatient "procedure" to remove these. He said he could do them all at once so I would only have one ting to recover from. Although he never actually used the word, it sounded a lot like foot surgery to me. He also suggested that I get some orthotics (of course) and that I run in something more supportive than my Brooks Axiom.

The orthotics and shoe recommendation came as no surprise. Although I've never been to a podiatrist, it seems to me that most people who do go, usually get orthotics recommended. While I agree that the Brooks Axiom may not be the most supportive shoe in the world, it's not bad, and I'm sticking with it. As for the foot surgery, I was pretty torn when I left the office. I liked the idea of being pain free and getting full range of motion in my big toe back. I wasn't too crazy about the recovery and forced layoff that would accompany the surgery, especially with my wife having a baby any day now. I don't think me being in a walking boot would go over too good in those early days with the new baby.

So after talking to a lot of people, I think I've decided to skip the surgery for now. The pain is nothing new, and if anything it seems to subside when I'm logging heavy mileage for whatever reason. I do think I'm going to get a second opinion with an orthopedist surgeon just to make sure that the first guy didn't miss anything. I mean a lot of the stuff he said made sense, but the broken ankle thing really threw me for a loop. In April of this year, I did hurt my ankle and it was pretty painful. I took a week off from running and when I got back into it, the pain had subsided a lot and I was able to run a marathon three weeks later. That is the only time I had ankle pain, ever. I can't believe it was actually broken. I don't believe it.

As for the running, I struggled through an absolutely miserable 9 mile run this morning. I guess sometimes during the recovery stage, you take a few step forwards and then out of the blue take a step back. It has been only two weeks since Chicago, so I'm not too worried about the occasional bad run. The foot felt fine.