One of the things I was looking forward the most to this fall was finding the perfect pair of fall boots. I was thinking a gorgeous suede knee high boot with a nice stiletto heel.
This thing, however is what I find myself wearing around my house.
Yeah, it's not attractive. Even worse, I could barely sleep with it on the first week. I may or may not have kicked the hubs multiple times and I definitely scratched him with some evil Velcro straps.
Just a few short weeks ago I went to hop out of bed on a Saturday morning and by time I dragged myself down the hall to my bathroom I was assuming the fetal position while wrenching in pain. I only dragged myself to the bathroom because after the first two steps I swore there must have been a metal or glass splinter penetrating the heel of my right foot. Upon further inspection there was no such splinter. There was however a decent bit of swelling in my foot and some ugly discoloration. Panicked, I called out for the hubs and the moment he saw my tears he was gathering up my wallet to take me to the emergency room. There are two things I don't do when it comes to sports: I don't bet and I don't show pain.
I dislocated a finger once and still finished a game, drove to the bar, downed a drink, sobered up and then drove home. Let me say trying to drive a stick shift with a busted right index finger is not an enjoyable task. I didn't even cry when I tore my quad in college. I just don't like to show pain.
My tears on this particular Saturday morning where twofold: first I was in a lot of pain and more importantly I've been training for a marathon which was right around the corner. I had a 12 mile run to do that weekend! Plus an 18 miler to do the next weekend. This was not the time to get hurt!!!
My intense fear of doctors let me persuade the hubs that I didn't need to be rushed to the emergency room. Rather I'd take it easy for the day, including a scheduled two-hand touch football game, and schedule an appointment with a specialist if I was still in pain on Sunday.
Yeah, I tried going running Sunday morning and came home after .5 miles, again in tears. Pride-0, Heel-2. So that Sunday I asked for doctor recommendations with all of my running buddies. Monday morning I scheduled an appointment for the very next day. I had to drive into work on Tuesday and even driving Peggy was painful.
$300 later at the doctor's office and a cortisone shot later I was diagnosed with the dreaded plantar fasciitis. The aforementioned ugly boot shown earlier is apparently some evil contraption to help keep my foot stabilized and decrease the amount of fluid that builds up in the heel of my foot. I've got to say, the boot definitely helps. There have been a few nights where I have forgotten to wear the boot and the next morning the pain in my foot is quite a few decimals higher than average.
So the past few weeks I've been trudging around the house wearing the boot as often as possible. Thankfully, Jax and Jewels no longer growl at the boot and I don't have to worry about Jax trying to make it into his next favorite chew toy.
However, my endurance took a significant hit. I missed two long runs and did a pathetic attempt a running for two weeks. I kept struggling with pain management and I was in this gray place where each day the pain started to feel a little bit less than the day before, so I wanted to rest more and not risk aggravating things and making it worse.
Any conceivable time goals I had for my first marathon were tossed out the window. My doctor advised me to start walking in stints while running anytime I felt the pressure in my heel reach a certain point. I've found that running down hills is more painful than running on flat surfaces, which means I'm the crazy person walking down hills for the moment.
In a nut shell, it sucks. I'm extremely disappointed that I won't be able to finish in a time that I wanted to, but I'm going to focus instead on finishing. I had to walk over the weekend for a few bits while doing my big 20 miler, but I finished it. Slow and steady will get me across that finish line.
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