Body breakdown

One of the disappointments of the summer is the breakdown of my body. By this point, I wanted to be regularly running 3-4 miles every other day. Now, though, I'll be lucky to ever run again. Seriously. My foot problems make it seem like I'll never really be a runner.

About a month ago now, I was running quite a bit on treadmills, and noticed the underneath of the my toes hurting. It didn't seem like a big deal, and felt like "normal soreness." However, later that week, I ended up sprinting to get a triple in softball, and took a funny stride, and felt an intense pain at the bottom of my foot, particularly under the 2nd toe.

I saw a podiatrist, who took some x-rays and told me I had a small stress fracture, but that it didn't seem big enough to cause any pain. He prescribed me some medicine, and put some padding around my foot. Three weeks later, I visited him again, and the pain really had not subsided. He seemed shocked by that, and ordered another x-ray, but this one a 3D one (he told me my insurance didn't cover it, but that he would pay for the x-ray, which was nice). The stress fracture was gone, but he said there was almost no cartilage between my joints in my second toe, and that my toe bones had become squared instead of rounded, and that this was what was causing the pain.

He gave me another cortisone shot, and that one helped a lot more - probably because he went right into the joint - but the foot still is in quite a bit of pain. Because I've been favoring it so much, the pain has spread to different areas of the foot, and because I'm on my feet all the time for both of my jobs, it really hasn't healed as well as I would have hoped. I've looked up foot and toe injuries, and it seems like I might have turf toe, which does take about 2 months to heal, so hopefully it'll start getting a lot better soon. I guess it's progress that I'm no longer limping.

Adding to my body breakdown was today's trip to the gym. I've been going to the gym every day still, but only this week has my foot felt well enough to add the sort of intensity to my workouts that I need. However, today, I was doing crunches on an exercise ball, and I felt a strain in my right side gut that made me double over in pain and nearly yelp out. I literally could not move for about five minutes, as I hugged my knees and tried to take deep breaths, and bit my lip to avoid making painful gasping noises. I even thought to myself, "Wow, I hope that when I die, that the pain isn't this intense." It hurt that bad, so much that I thought I might have to go to the hospital. Then, it just sort of went away.

I think it's too high on my stomach for a hernia, which is a good thing - surgery right now would suck. But I'm not sure. The pain was a little to the right of my belly button, and up my front/side, and felt like a muscle or a tendon pulling. Luckily, I head to the doctor tomorrow for my annual checkup, and hopefully she'll have an idea. I was stretched out and warm everywhere, so I don't understand what could have happened.

As it is, I have lost about 15 pounds this summer, and feel pretty good. It's all the aches and pains that are taking my momentum away, just a bit.