Well, That Sucks

“Well, that sucks.”

It wasn’t eloquent, but that was the sentence that came out of my mouth Wednesday morning.  No, I didn’t go outside and see that my car had a flat tire, that I had forgotten to put $0.25 in the meter and ended up with a $50 parking ticket, or even during a demonstration of some amazing new vacuum cleaner (get it? :-).  I was on the phone with my orthopedist’s office.

Those following my blog know that I have been whining incessantly about my left foot bothering me ever since the NYC Half Marathon in mid-March.  At first I was only grumbling a little, but by last weekend my complaints had crescendoed into a very grouchy blog about how I could barely walk after a 10K race last Saturday morning.  A couple of days after that race I had an MRI done to see what I was being so bitchy about, and this past Wednesday my orthopedist’s office called to give me my results.  That’s when I said, “Well, that sucks.”

My orthopedist’s assistant, Karen, called to tell me that I had a stress fracture in my left foot, and to come in as soon as possible to get a medical boot and some crutches.  “Crutches?”, I asked.  “Yes.  Sorry, Alison.”  And that’s when the only sentence that popped into my head was, “Well, that sucks”.

Since Karen isn’t a physician herself, she couldn’t give me much more information and I was going to have to wait until my appointment the next day.  I already owned a boot (and whoever expects to get a 2-for-1 out of their durable medical equipment?), so Karen told me to put it on ASAP and not move too much, and at my appointment the next day they would outfit me with the proper gear I needed.

At my doctor’s office the next day, he explained my injury in more detail.  I had a stress fracture on the 3^rd metatarsal (ie. middle foot bone).  Since it hurt so much to walk, he wanted me to keep my weight off it as much as possible for the next 4 weeks.  His guess was that I was going to have to keep my foot immobilized for about 6.  Trying to remain hopeful I said, “once I’m out of the boot, I can run again, right?”  Wrong.  After I get out of the boot he’ll let me use a spin bike, and a few weeks after that he predicts I’ll be able to start running again, but just for a few minutes to start with.  In my head I heard a crackling sound as the next 2 - 3 months of my race season went up in smoke.

My doctor is a runner himself, so he looked at me empathetically when he said, “I’m sorry.  I know this really sucks.”  Well said. 

I needed a different boot than the one I owned, and apparently I am too short for “adult” crutches, so he wrote me a prescription for both and sent me across town (yes, on a foot that isn’t supposed to have a lot of weight on it) to a durable medical equipment supply store (that was up a flight of stairs, is fully carpeted, and doesn’t have a handicapped bathroom).

I had to take 2 buses to get back to Grand Central with my old boot weighing down my backpack.  I had time before the next train, so I went and bought lunch – and then learned how it’s impossible to carry anything when you’re on crutches.

That night I thought a bit about my situation.  Yes, it really sucks.  The only workouts I can do are swimming and deep water running, my two least favorite forms of exercise.  This also means I can only work out on weekdays when I’m in the city and near my gym, but it also means that every weekday morning I’m going to have to crutch myself from my gym on 45^th & Lexington to my office on 39^th & 5^th (I did it on Friday.  Short version, it was more of a workout that the one I did inside the gym).  I was going to miss the half marathon the following weekend, one of my favorite races as it’s all women (or as my friend Stephanie and I call it: “All chicks, no di*ks”). My season was 2 races old and was already at a standstill.

I thought about other things, too, though.  In my mind I kept thinking that at the same time that my doctor was discussing the ramifications of a stress fracture, another mom was being told that her child had cancer.  If given a choice, I think that other mom and I would both pick 2 healthy children and a wrecked race season.  So, even though it sucks, it sucks a lot less than it could.

It’s been a few days, and I’m starting to get used to my life on crutches.  I got some pads to ease the intense pain in my hands and wrists (and lesson learned, when the guy at the store shows you all the different styles, it’s a bad time to say to your “fashionable” 8 year old daughter, “I don't care. You pick”), got weight lifting gloves to reduce the number of blisters on my palms, and my husband Wil added a cup holder so that I neither have to worry that my caffeine addiction will suffer or that my coworkers will plot to kill me in the next 4 weeks.  With my new pimped out ride, I’m just going to have to make the best of this situation, no matter how much it sucks.