I can now say that I am neither a big fan of unions (work-place) nor of non-unions (bony type).
I met with Dr. Cohen today and the results of the CT scan are not so good. There is NO healing in the fracture area. Zippo.
My options are becoming more limited. There is a possibility of a bone scan to see if there is ANY evidence of bone activity. Barring that, the specialist said that I should try running on it. I guess I will see if it hurts! If it doesn't hurt, I will probably run for the rest of my life with a broken bone in my heel. If it does hurt, there are three options: get surgery to remove the non-union bone, wait a bit longer to see if it heals more or becomes less painful, or never run again.
I definitely don't like that last option...
In better news, the foot is feeling ALOT better. I don't feel like a chronic anymore. Plus my swim continues to improve. I did a 300 meter time trial and went a 3:36 (from a crappy dive and with crap turns), followed by 5X100 on 1:09 average.
Also, I went out and rode outside for the first time in what feels like foreever. I went with a bunch-0-friends and we did the ride for heart. I have attached a pic of the group as well as a pic that proves why you shouldn't carry your lunch in your aerobars.
Here are the higlights of the last couple of weeks:
Biking for 4 hours on my trainer, inside (but at 5000 ft), while it is a sunny 20 degrees outside. And not going crazy.
Racing girls in the pool that used to kk my bum. We did at set called 'California Cruising' which is 300 at x per 100, 100 at x-5', 100 easy, then using the same pattern, 300, 200, 100, 300, 300, 100. We do that 2-3 times around. Last week I got down to x being 1:20 long course!
Sleeping at 10000 ft in my tent and not feeling like I have been hit by a Mac truck in the AM
Going to the Farmer's Market on Saturday. The first one of the season!
And in local news: Toronto is cracking down on graffiti. On one hand I feel like there are more serious things that money and resources could be spent on. On the other, I can see how graffiti would be annoying to some property owners and even potentially offensive.
In any case, before it goes the way of the dodo, I took some pics of my absolute favorite piece of graffiti in Toronto. I will be sorry to see this one go.
Let me be honest, I really don't get all excited about my birthday. I do get slightly giddy knowing that I can eat certain things that I usually don't. Like, today, I had a danish with my coffee from Jet Fuel (this actually gave me the extra kk I needed for a hard swim practice!). I do get excited by crazy presents however. This is the gift I got from my brother who is way over in South Africa at the moment. This video is copyright Njal Rollinson (for all you would be pirates)
The surgeon I met on Friday said that I was lucky. I guess seeing as he is surgeon he sees the worst cases. When diagnosis is wrong or delayed and the healing is slow bad things happpen...He said that he has seen lots of peeps with calcaneal fractures who have to get pins, or a piece of the bone removed. He said he has seen people that have never run again (the horror!).
So, I am a lucky case where the prognosis is only 3 months delayed and the bone has started to heal. A bit.
He couldn't be sure how much the bone has healed from the X-Ray so he will be ordering me a CT scan for this week. Once he has that he will be able to say with more certainty how many more weeks I will need to stay off of the foot.
For now, I am not to run or 'jump'. Got it. I am water running, however. AND, making lots of friends in the 70+ age group. We chat about things like our aches and deteriorating bone density.
I want to avoid biking outside so that I don't have to clip out (twisting foot is not great fun) and so that I don't have to step down (all weight is on the heal when walking in biking shoes). The silver lining to this is that I get to do a bunch of high altitude training on my indoor trainer. The mask tends to squish one of my eyes shut, which combined with the snot, sweat and spit oozing out of the vent on the mask makes me pretty darn attractive. Actually, I really avoid doing these workouts when Mike is around. I know he has seen me at my worst, but I don't want to push my luck.
"There is a coronally oriented fracture through the anterior calcaneal process". Uh-huh. Basically the results of my MRI have come back and...I have a broken heel bone. So much for trying to suck it up and run for the last two months! Perhaps I have a higher pain tolerance than I thought...
When I went over on my ankle back in February I fractured the top part of my heel bone (where it meets the top of the foot and the bottom of the ankle). From what I have read on-line, this type of break seems to be commonly misdiagnosed as a severe ankle sprain.
Here is a link to the pic (see the anterior talocalcaneal articulation) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Subtalar_Joint.PNG
Dr. Cohen, Kevin Jardine and the Urbane Athlete, as well as Marcel Charland (and the rest of the staff at the MacIntosh Clinic at U of T) have been doing their best to get this diagnosed and to get a treatment plan in place. I wanted to thank them for all their help! The next step :) is to see an orthopaedic surgeon this coming Friday.
It has been 3 weeks since I have written - apologies! I jumped on a plane home from Australia when I had a chance and it has been a whirlwind of appointments since. I think I have spent more time in appointment rooms than training since I have been back.
Running has been really frustrating - some days the foot feels fine and other days it feels like a razor blade is being drawn from my heel along my planter fascia. This morning, I was finally told that I will have to elliptical and water run for two weeks during my rehab. Before I was told this I had been trying to run as much as was bearable.
I have an MRI scheduled in the next couple of weeks just to make sure there isn't something going on that people cannot see.
Before I could get the MRI scheduled I had to get my eye-balls X-Rayed (well, okay, my eye-sockets). I needed to have this done bc I had worked in a machine shop in the past and there was a risk that I could have metal shards in my eyes. I am not quite sure how I would have missed a metal shard flying into my eye, but that is the protocol. I guess they have to check for metal in the eye sockets because the MRI (note MAGNETIC Resonance Imaging) can magnetically rip the metal right out through your eye-ball. Better safe than sorry, I say.
Both swimming and biking are continuing to improve regardless of my foot issues. I posted to consecutive PBs in the workout last week and I made the break on the Donut ride this past Saturday.
So here they are. My feet, or foot, that I have been going on about for 2 months. I twisted my foot in the snow in early February just before hopping on the plane to come to the Lifesport training camp. And it still hasn't healed eventhough Xrays did not show any breaks. What I have subsiquently found out is that only major trauma will show on a Xray so soon after the injury. Other more subtil damage like bone bruising, will only show up 5+ days after.
Training last week consisted of some recovery up until Thursday and then I headed back into a final big week before I head home on Saturday the 12th of April. Friday through Sunday the training went really well - capping off the week with a 100 KM 3.5 hour ride. We got stuck in the heaviest rainstorm I have ever experienced. You know, when you are wet on your bike you can think that you are simply wet. But seriously I have never been this wet. On the evening news they report were the wettest place in Australia was for the day. Well, the wettest place was Noosa/Tewantin at around 10 AM and THAT was exactly were our pack was at that time.
