A Reason to Never Play Soccer

Up until 5th grade I was always jealous of my friends that played soccer. But do you think I ever told my parents that I wanted to play? NO! That's not how I roll...

But it's actually a good thing I didn't tell them. I found out some things about my foot this morning and have been told specifically to never play soccer. Also - to expect arthritis in my big toe when I'm older.

Let me take you back to April when I took a few days off of running right before the Nike Women's race to try to heal some foot pain I was feeling. Turns out, I didn't need rest but rather to run a half marathon and then the pain would disappear for a few days.

After Burlington, I took two weeks off to finally heal the hamstring injury and the foot pain. Wouldn't you know, the foot pain continued. But it didn't stay in one spot. No, it has moved around my darn right foot for the last few months. Over the weekend it started to get much worse and yesterday on my run I had enough. It was actually painful, not just a dull pain that I had when I was sitting. It began to hurt each time I landed. And it hurt a lot.

You may be thinking, why didn't I just go to the doctor sooner? For one, there was no chance of me taking time off of work. Once school got out I started the doctor search. It was made a little more difficult by the fact that I don't know any doctors here in DC and every doctor I managed to find and call were out of network with my insurance. A simple call to an office took hours and days of research, especially when I added on the review-checks on Yelp, to make sure I was seeing someone good.

Somehow I lucked out this morning in search and got someone who is not only a podiatrist, but can also make orthotics. My chiropractor informed me in February that I was 6 years overdue for new ones, so I wanted to be able to kill two birds with one stone: new orthotics and to get the foot pain checked out.

I called the office up at 10:00 am and somehow got an appointment for 11:30 am. Same day appointments never happen for me. Like - ever.

After looking at my foot, my current orthotics, and an x-ray, this is what I learned this morning...

1. The doctor was surprised that I had never sprained my ankle with my orthotics because they were too high. My next ones will be much lower.
2. I broke my fourth toe at some point (the one next to my pinky toe) but I don't remember when. He showed me the actual bone growth on the x-ray, which was fascinating.
3. The joint to my big toe is 1 cm higher than all of my other toe joints. This means that I will probably get arthritis there. He's hoping he can design the orthotics to lower that joint so they're all more aligned. I was also instructed to never play soccer, since the force from kicking the ball will move my joint/toe and make it worse. Running, however, is a go! Now that he's pointed this out on the x-ray, I can actually see the difference on my foot. The left foot seems normal, but the right is odd :( 
4. There's no exact reason for the pain I'm feeling in my foot. It could be a small bone in the middle of my foot which may be helped by the orthotics.... but may not? He added some padding to my current orthotics to test out while we wait for the new ones to arrive. 
5. I must keep a detailed log of the foot pain so that when I see him in a few weeks I can update him. 
6. No flats. No sandals. I need some elevation to my shoes. Sounds like he's giving me the go-ahead to go shoe-shopping!

Oh the things you can discover with an x-ray! I was ready for him to look at the other foot and my hands to learn more. There aren't any problems, but I am fascinated by what you can see with them. 

As for now, I'm going to make sure to keep icing the foot. This has been quite the year for injuries. The more I want to run, the less I am able to. I don't actually know if I'll be able to start NYCM training on Monday like I'm supposed to but I keep reminding myself that it will be better to start late than to take time off in the middle of training.