Stupid Foot.

Monday, 9 March 2009

Almost 3 years ago I injured my foot orienteering at St Helens and it hasn't been the same since although it has developed into a predictable pattern : i.e injury (generally something tiny that shouldn't injure anyone like stepping on an unexpected stick) followed by 4 weeks of intense-fall-down-when-triggered pain then 3 weeks of training myself to put my foot down normally again, then a few weeks of tentative sport, then a couple of months of being able to do almost regular stuff, then going orienteering or playing soccer again and re-igniting the whole thing.  The problem is always there, it's just a matter of how long I can go between inflaming it - so this year I gave up soccer (I'd missed half of the previous two seasons due to this injury anyway) and although I was disappointed it wasn't too big a deal as soccer games take ages and they are sort of inconvenient for the rest of the family or they clash with orienteering or holidays or whatever. But I have just re-done my ankle orienteering at St Helens and now I'm contemplating 6 weeks of no basketball, no tennis, no runs (runs are ok when my foot is ok as I can see the ground I'm stepping on), no squash, no gym and not even any swimming until I can move my foot laterally without feeling faint from pain.  I'm starting to think that much as I love orienteering and it's been part of my life ever since forever, it just might not be worth the risk. It's a bit like when I trained for a marathon and got such a serious knee injury I couldn't run for 3 months and I realised that whilst it would be nice to do a marathon it definitely wasn't worth missing all that sport for so long..   Of course the situation is made more frustrating because orienteering is such a family thing for us - the kids love getting out into the bush and Jon enjoys it but the days are really a bit long when you don't get to go out on a course yourself.

This isn't actually an x-ray of my foot although I do have a collection of recent foot  X-rays, MRI and CT scans I could have used had I been able to hobble to the games room to find them. I have been to see a couple of foot 'experts' and the verdict was sort of the same - it seems there's a LOT wrong with my foot/ankle so that nailing down the exact cause of this problem is difficult and any surgery probably wouldn't be successful as the tendons and stuff are already loose due to a zillion years of rolling my ankle so the outcome could even be worse... Anyway - the last doctor I saw told me to 're-present when the injury was acute' so I'll do that this week just in case..