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Boot Chronicles: How I Really Feel

I've been wearing my fracture boot for nearly 14 days (minus the 1.5 days I didn't have it during the Great Flood of '15), and I'm having a hard time with it. Not just the boot itself--its clunkiness, stuffiness, heaviness--but I'm reminded of how much longer I have to wear it and, more than that, I'm afraid the fracture isn't my only problem. I feel pain where I don't think I should, based on the location of my fracture (first metatarsal). More and more, I'm concerned that I also have a neuroma. I feel pain very specifically on the ball of my foot, around the third metatarsal head. My doctor said this could be "referred" pain from the fracture, but I'm not so sure.

It's hard to know the timing of everything; I avoided getting a new MRI for weeks and weeks after initially feeling the foot pain in April, so I don't know how old (or new) the fracture was at the time of diagnosis. My hope is that, at my follow-up appointment in a couple of weeks, assuming I'm still feeling the ball-of-foot pain, my doctor will give me a cortisone shot with the intention of curing the neuroma--if he agrees there's one present. Then I should be able to determine whether the pain in that specific area had been caused by the fracture or a neuroma. That's my own medical opinion, though. And I'm only an obsessive hypochondriac, not nearly a qualified medical professional.

One perq of wearing the boot: my niece loves to push the "nose."

Making a new foot-impaired friend.

I'm becoming concerned that I'll never have full use of my feet again, that I'll never be able to run again. This is how my mind works; I jump to extremes, I catastrophize. But I also feel I have to consider all possibilities. All of this worry--we'll call it anxiety--keeps me from doing things. It's killing my spirit, my motivation to keep on going and doing what I know I can still do: swim, bike, strength train (on the floor). It's wearing on me, after several months, and at least a couple more to come. 

I realize this is quite a downer post, but this is how I feel, under the rose-colored glasses.

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Unknown said…
Love you, Lee! This may be a good time to begin to practice mindfulness. May I recommend a book? "Wherever You Go There You Are, mindfulness meditation in everyday life", Jon Kabat-Sinn. He also wrote Full Catastrophe Living.
August 9, 2015 at 4:33 PM
Unknown said…
Love you, Lee! This may be a good time to begin to practice mindfulness. May I recommend a book? "Wherever You Go There You Are, mindfulness meditation in everyday life", Jon Kabat-Zinn. He also wrote Full Catastrophe Living.
August 9, 2015 at 4:34 PM
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