Take Cover, I’m Nuclear

Posted on January 22, 2010 with 5 Comments

My right foot has been giving me some random twinges of pain over the last several months. Nothing major, the kind you barely register… you go, “ouch!” and then forget about it and get on with your day. The kind that you figure was probably caused by sleeping in a wonky position or taking a wonky step and it will just take care of itself in a few days, right? But sometime around November, it twinged and I’m a big whiny complainer (ask my boyfriend, he’ll surely confirm this fact) so I complained to my boyfriend that woe is my foot. And he asked me how long it had been bothering me and it was like I was hit over the head with a baseball bat of revelation because WHAM! I guess those random and un-connected twinges were actually ALL IN THE SAME FOOT. AND PROBABLY THE SAME PROBLEM. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before that moment, but all of a sudden I was wracked with the realization that, “uh… I guess about a year. Huh! Maybe I should do something about that!”

Oddly, around the time that this injury of sorts was brought to my attention, it started getting worse. Much, much worse. Funny how that happens eh? I will concede that a certain percentage of the perceived worsening of the condition is likely not worsening so much as me paying attention. And me paying attention to pain = it’s pissing me off a whole lot more (= poor Marty because as the pain increases slightly and my awareness increases lots, my bitching increases exponentially. He’s a saint, truly.)

But that said, I do think the remaining percentage of the perceived worsening of the condition is attributable to the fact that the condition actually, you know, worsened.

(Random aside: Do you guys ever get that thing where you repeat a word so many times that you don’t recognize it anymore and it starts to sound weird and foreign and loses all meaning? Worsening is that word at this very moment. It means nothing. What the hell is worsening anyway? It sounds like some kind of sausage. Bratwurst or something.)

So I’ve had a lot of twinges of pain and had days where I actually limp around and have been a little afraid to undertake the Couch to 5K program that I wanted to start this year and even days where I vaguely considered if cutting off my foot would make the pain worse or better, because I wasn’t too sure. So I went to the doctor thinking he’d probably tell me to suck it up.

His words? “Okay, it’s either a ligament problem or a bone problem. Can’t tell which because of the part of your foot. It could be a stress fracture but I’m not sure. So here’s a prescription for some anti-inflammatory pills. They’re kind of expensive, sorry. And here’s a referral for an X-ray, but that probably won’t show anything up because a stress fracture is too small to see so I’ll get you on the waiting list for a bone scan at the hospital. In the meantime, go see a physiotherapist and if it hasn’t improved in a week, I’m sending you to a podiatrist.”

Well, knock me over with a feather.

Anyway, so I’ve been taking anti-inflammatory pills which are quite effective at dulling the pain, which leads me to believe the problem is at least partially ligament or muscles. And I’ve been getting physio once every 4 or 5 days, which inevitably makes my foot feel infinitely worse for the following two days but I think it’s actually helping. He’s surprised at the slow progress though so he thought maybe it is a bone problem after all, which brings me to this morning.

At 8:30 am I was at the hospital getting an injection of some weird glowy stuff that is going to seep into my bones a little, and I have to go back at 11 am for the actual scan. But I guess not all of the injected material makes it into my bones, so they like you to flush that out of your system prior to the scan. So I’m ordered to drink 4 large glasses of liquid in between the two appointments. I’m now hopped up on a doctor-ordered venti coffee from Starbucks and am chugging my way through 3 glasses of water. Good lord I’m full.

Anyway, do you know where they do bone scans at the hospital? In the nuclear medicine department. I find this kind of funny.