Went to the podiatrist this morning. After taking my rather lengthy history and looking at my MRI from a couple weeks ago, he agreed that I do have a rather severe case of sesamoiditis. In fact, he thought it looked like perhaps I'd had a fracture, something which my sports medicine doc and her cadre of radiologists vigorously denied. Hmmmm...interesting. Doesn't matter too much now, though. The question is what to do next.
He looked at my $250 custom orthotics that I just got and pronounced them worthless for dealing with this problem. Too flimsy; not enough support or cushion. He said they'd be fine for Joe Ordinary who wasn't doing so many miles, but not for me.
Sooooo...they casted my feet and $325 later, I left the office. Oh, plus $30 specialist copay. This injury has been very expensive. $250 ER visit, at least $350 last fall for MRI and cortisone shot and doctor visits and x-rays, plus $250 for the last pair of orthotics. That's $1175 so far, and I haven't seen the bill for the latest MRI. Oh, and that's just my part - the insurance has paid a fair amount (but they don't pay a dime for orthotics).
At least the podiatrist is fast. He'll have the orthotics ready for me on Friday. And the good news is that they will last (he says) 10-12 years. Wow.
The best news? In his opinion, I should be able to start racewalking again in 2-3 weeks, gradually ramping up my miles. I hope he is right. I almost dared to hope and smile this morning thinking about that. But I will admit that I'm afraid to get my hopes up too much.
4 comments:
Good luck...just take it slow, ok? :-)
Glad that you have more answers, sad about how much this is costing. Hopefully you will be up and moving soon racking those mile back up.
Be careful though!
Possibly you didn't have a fracture at the time of the first MRI, but fractured it later, when your foot was numb from the cortisone and other things you were treating it with. Maybe during Portland or some other very hard, sustained effort.
Injuries are so frustrating, and recovery never seems to go according to schedule. Good luck to you on your journey back to healthy feet.
I suppose it's possible I didn't have a fracture at the time of the first MRI and got it later; however, by the 2nd MRI the podiatrist sees a fracture. This is the same 2nd MRI that the sports medicine doc and multiple radiologists pored over in search of anything that explained the odd new location of my pain, just proximal to my previous injury. So, the two medical teams seem to disagree both about what is going on and about how to treat it; though, they do both agree that orthotics are necessary.
I am happy that I might get to RW again soon, but I am still a bit nervous about whether the podiatrist is right or not.
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