Booted

I was lucky enough to score a sports medicine appointment first thing this morning. After an awesome team of three doctors examined my ankle and asked me a zillion questions, they concluded that I probably have tendonitis (not bursitis). Still, it should have gotten better with the month I just spent resting and icing, and since it didn't, they felt more aggressive treatment was warranted. I explained that I'm about to start training for another marathon and that I'm moving away in three weeks, so it would be really nice if they could fix my ankle quickly please. The head doc said that he was confident that I could be pain-free within three weeks. That was great to hear! They decided to put me in a big boot, the kind you wear for a broken foot, for a couple of weeks and get me some physical therapy too. By immobilizing my ankle, the boot should allow the inflammation to go down. If I'm not pain-free within 1.5-2 weeks, they'll look at giving me a cortisone shot or something similar into the inflamed area to directly target the inflammation. They don't do cortisone as a first-line treatment because apparently there's some evidence that it can slightly increase the risk for tendon rupture.

I feel pretty good about this plan of action. The boot is a little tricky. It's very large (comes almost up to my knee) and heavy and I can only walk very slowly in it. Also, the sole of the boot is pretty thick, so I need to wear a shoe on my right foot that has a little elevation or else I'm uncomfortably lopsided. But I can deal with it for a couple of weeks, no problem, if it allows me to start running again! I don't think I will try to sleep in it, though.

I have my first physical therapy appointment on Wednesday; no idea what to expect. The docs also recommended that until the ankle is completely out of the woods, I adopt a sort of anti-inflammatory diet -- basically, don't eat sugar or things that my body will quickly convert into sugar or drink alcohol. They pretty much said that doing this might possibly help the inflammation go away more quickly, and in any case it certainly can't hurt me. I don't know if there's any evidence that a diet like this actually helps combat inflammation, but I see no reason not to try if there's even a chance it could have me up and running again sooner.