Sunday, May 17, 2020

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.

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