NOW I’M CERTAINLY NOT the type of guy who is rarely hurt - in the last 10 years, I’ve sprained an ankle seven times (once very severely - 12 weeks to recover!), broken my ankle once, pulled both hip flexors, pulled my right hamstring, suffered many calf spasms, tore my rotator cuff and sprained a toe. And took a pop to the face leaving me with a brutal black eye for good measure.On the other hand, I’ve used very little in the way of medical services: I wore an aircast and boot for my broken ankle, wore a number of ace bandages, took an ibuprofen one night for an ankle, rubbed a local anesthetic on my gums when I got my wisdom teeth out, and drank a saltwater packet when I got hit with traveler’s sickness. All told, I made two trips to the hospital for x-rays, one trip to a clinic overseas, and otherwise just standard physicals. No Advils, no Robotussins, no Nyquil, none of that.
I’ve never really believed in painkillers - medicine is incredibly useful in treating diseases your body can’t fight on its own, but pain is different. I don’t understand the people who pop a pill every time they have a headache. How do they ever expect to improve their tolerance for pain?
So you can imagine I was a bit disheartened when I got up Thursday with enough pain in my right foot that I walked with a limp/gangsta lean (call it what you will) at work all day. I don’t remember rolling on that ankle or twisting it or anything of that sort. By Friday, I physically could not put any weight on the front of my right foot, and was having a lot of trouble even walking. The pain was local to somewhere between the ankle and the fifth (outside) metatarsal. This is particularly worrying because, as anyone who follows sports knows, stress fractures on the fifth metatarsal are pretty common, can come on without any trigger, and often require surgery that puts you out of commission for 6-8 weeks.
I gave up and made a quick appointment to a local podiatrist who worked as the team doctor for a local college basketball team. I always like the athlete doctors the best - they won’t tell you things like “oh, and don’t do anything fun for the next month.” We got the X-rays and luckily nothing was broken. It turned out I’d sprained one of the ligaments between the cuboid and the third cuneiform bone, but since those bones move around so little, I hadn’t noticed until a few days after it happened.
“But, Doc, I have a soccer game tomorrow.”
No worries, he says; a quick jaunt to the cabinet for a needle filled with steroids (cortisone, in this case), and ten minutes later, I couldn’t feel the pain. The next day, I played a full soccer game at 90%. To go from unable to walk to near full strength in a half day? Maybe I shouldn’t put down modern medicine so much.
Then again, the anti-inflammatories the Doc gave me are still sitting unopened on my kitchen counter. Only a wuss needs those, right?
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