I can't hardly believe that it has been since last November since blogging about anything. The truth is I haven't really had much to blog about. The last time I posted an entry I talked about my injury and that I hoped to be back running around the first of the new year.
Well the first of January has come and gone and I am still not back to training on a regular basis. The 12 weeks of rest that I was initially told to take off had little to no affect on my heel problems. The first day back to running last January 8th. I felt something POP under my right foot a couple of miles into that first run. Then a searing pain shot up my leg.
Completely freaked out I immediately scheduled an appt. with my Ortho/Pod. He said that it was just a bad case of Plantar Faciaitis and shipped me off to Physical therapy for 6 weeks. After six weeks of prescription anti inflamatories, ultrasound, deep tissue massage, ice, rest, and absolutely zero running I tried to run again. Everything was tight as I had expected it to be and things felt sorta normal for a week or so. Then the pain in my right foot started to return.
Extremely frustrated by this time I once again returned to the doctors to figure out just what the Hell the problem was. He suggested that I go to Kansas City to get an MRI so that we could get a better view of what we were dealing with.
MRI results showed that it was indeed PF and a very severe case to boot. Both Plantar Fascia tendons were showing to be around 9-10mm in thickness and that my central cord of my plantar fascia on my right foot. The foot where I was experiencing the most pain had a 30% tear on it.
In a nutshell. The doc said that the reason why all the non-evasive methods of therapy and rehab weren't responding was because my fascia tendon was so inflamed that the body just said screw it and stopped trying to heal itself.
O.K. makes perfect sense to me. My only question at this point was when do I get to run again? We discussed some different ways for getting this situation fixed. Electro shockwave therapy to surgery.
I'd already done some homework on all of the options as I had anticipated it coming down to having to get some kind of evassive method performed. Deciding that I would go ahead and have endoscopic surgery performed to do a partial release of my plantar fascia tendon. It was the least evasive method that my insurance would cover and had the second fastest recovery time of all the procedures. At about 6 weeks per foot.
Now, the only question I had for the doc was. How soon could we get both of them done? My answer was not exactly what I wanted to hear. But they told me I had to wait another month before they could get me into surgery. They also told me that they couldn't do both feet at the same time. Because it often lessens the chance of a full recovery. WTF? Initially they told me that I would have to wait 2 months to get the second one done.
After discussing my situation with the doctor of my needing to return to running this year. I managed to get that waitng period on the second foot reduced to 3 weeks after the first one.
Phew! That was a lot of B.S. to have to sift through just to get to where I am now. Which is surgery 8 days from today.
I keep telling myself, "What the Hell is another 10 weeks?" It's already been over a year since I first started to notice little pains and twinges in my heels. Somehow last year I managed to set the course record at the Freestate 40 miler and win the half marathon at Rockcreek a few weeks after that with this crap going on. I put in the second fastest known time on the Kokopelli trail on Memorial Day weekend. Which definitely didn't help my problem. After Kokopelli I think my body just said your done. "I'm pulling the plug on your running." Since June first of last year I have done nothing really as far as running is concerned.
I'm miss it a tremendous amount and I try to keep my head and my heart in the game as much as I can by volunteering but it's just not the same. I hope all this surgery crap really works out for the best. So I can get back to running and racing soon.
All of this though has not been a bad thing. I have got to spend a lot more time with my family. Hanging out with the wife and kids and get a lot of stuff done around the house. It's also allowed me to put in more overtime at work and pad the ol' bank account somewhat which is nice to have in todays economy. Still though I'm ready to get back to running.
Hopefully if things go well this time. Then I plan on atleast attempting to make it to the starting line of a few races by late Summer/Fall.
