People keep asking me

Is it a stress fracture?

Which is annoying me all out of proportion to the question. I know why people are asking, they’re genuinely concerned, that’s all. But I got the same question when I fractured my pelvis and so now for Broken Bone 2.0, it’s annoying. Plus I'm cranky because I'm in pain.

Also I didn’t know what the difference was between a stress fracture and an acute fracture. I mean the bone is broken either way, so what difference does it make? Still, I was curious so turned to Dr. Google.

From this article I learned the following:

• Stress fractures usually cause a progressive increase in pain that is worse with activity. This lines up with what happened when I fractured my pelvis. It started hurting a few weeks before that last race, and then boom, I could no longer walk. I think it was breaking for a couple of weeks.
• Acute fractures typically have a sudden onset, with swelling and ecchymosis (otherwise known as bruising). And this is what happened to me on Saturday. I had zero pain in my foot and then boom, I had a lot of pain. Once I got home and took off my shoe, my foot started swelling and it’s still swollen. Normally my feet are scrawny bony things but right now you can’t see a dang bone across where my toes come into my foot. It’s Puffyville all the way. 

There’s a potential for something called a Lisfranc injury of the foot. Two months ago, I went to Urgent Care because of pain and swelling on the top of my foot. It hasn’t fully resolved so who knows, maybe that’s going on too.

And May's running is over

Yesterday at about mile 6 of my planned 18-mile run, my right foot started hurting in the area where all your toe joints come into the foot. I’ve never felt that before, and I hadn’t fallen or tripped or anything. I wasn't sure what to think but honestly, you get little pains all the time while running and usually they just go away, they’re nothing. So I kept going.

But my foot kept hurting. Oddly it hurt more running uphill than down (I love running uphill), and by about mile 7.5 I thought well I’ll get to the house and see if it’s a muscle spasm (my route took me by my house at about mile 10 so I could get a sip of water if needed).

But by mile 9.5 I knew I wasn’t going to get all 18 miles in, I hurt too much. So I got home (which was just over 10 miles total), took off my shoes and started to gently massage the bottom of my foot only I couldn’t—it hurt so much that I gasped and got tears in my eyes. I knew I needed to get it checked so I took a painful shower (hard to take a shower on one leg but I’ve had a lot of experience doing that from when I broke my pelvis) and then Kent drove me to the orthopedic urgent care clinic, the same one I went to when I fractured my pelvis, talk about a bad deja vu.

Long story not so long, I broke my foot; specifically, the third metatarsal. The break was clearly visible on the x-ray and I was devastated because I knew what that meant. I asked anyway, how long do breaks like these take to heal? Six to eight weeks, she said. She put me in a boot, gave me discharge instructions (elevate the foot, ice, Tylenol as needed, the orthopedist will call with a follow up appointment in 10 to 14 days).

So. No Grandma’s Marathon this summer. No more running in May, probably not much in June, and once again I will need to rebuild my running stamina etc.

This weekend has been a real low point for me. I keep randomly tearing up because this marathon meant so much to me and I was making amazing progress. I hope this is just a freaky random fracture and means nothing in terms of the osteoporosis (which by the way, I have been taking meds for) or a possible metastasis to bone from the breast cancer.

April was a good running month

As I’d shared with another blogger, I feel pretty fortunate that I’ve always preferred running alone and super early. That’s been useful during this pandemic—I don’t have to worry about social distancing (I see very few runners out when I go), and I didn't have to get used to running alone.

I’ve been working hard on my marathon training; my coach helps a lot and has been instrumental in me not getting injured. Case in point, I started having left knee pain a few weeks ago and I would have just blown it off, even though it was bad enough I cut short a long run. I shared it with him in the weekly check in (he has a section where I am to list any niggles, pain, etc.) and he immediately had me take a day off from running. Because of that, I got in to see my physical therapist (yes, my clinic is open) and we’ve been working on getting that all sorted out.

All of that to say that I hit several firsts for me: first time running 40 miles in a week, first time running 137 miles in a month and longest ever run of 16.3 miles. I still have doubts that I will actually be able to run this marathon, but that’s more about the mental side of running 26.2 miles all alone.

Last month I also ran the first of two planned virtual half marathons. This was for the Garmin half marathon, and I treated as a long run. I did one this last weekend too, which was for the Running with the Cows half marathon. I doubt I'll be a fan of virtual races after the pandemic is over (if that day ever comes), but these were good mental practice for me, running with no other runners, no support, no people cheering us on and no real finish line. Just my watch as it ticked over to 13.11 miles (I go the extra 0.01 so Garmin counts the damn run).

The ties that bind

I started this blog post a year ago, and saved it in my drafts. I was a little busy going through cancer treatment at the time so this fell off my radar.

What you see is a photo of my granddaughter holding a photo of me as a little girl standing in front of the same piano Alison is standing in front of. I don't remember us not having that piano, and I played it all the time growing up. Oddly, I never took piano lessons although I did become a musician, first on flute and later and for much longer as an oboist.

My younger son and his wife were downsizing before they moved to a much smaller house (moving from Arizona to California will do that to you). They really couldn't take the piano with them so they found another family who wanted one. I like knowing that other children are playing away on that piano and I hope they enjoy it as much as I did and as Ben's kids did.