More raking...more foot pain

Saturday, November 13, 2010

When I woke at 4 a.m. to visit the rest room, I knew I was in trouble. The pain in my foot had intensified while I was sleeping…and had actually waked me up. I tried to get up to walk the 10 steps to the bathroom, but as soon as I placed some weight on the right foot…the pain surging through my body told me that wouldn’t be happening. I hopped into the bathroom, did what I had to do, took four Advil and hopped back to bed. When I woke again around 7 a.m. with no relief, I knew it was going to be a long weekend…for Holly. Though she loves to nurse me back to health and listen to my continuous whining while running to here and there to serve my every need, I really didn’t want her to have to suffer through me again. Oh well…for worse or for worser…at least that’s what I heard the priest say.

We grabbed some crutches from the neighbors and I put them near my chair as I sat, foot propped up, with the ice pack wrapped around. I did this until my foot was numb…about 30 minutes…then took it off and sat another hour reading. I was getting completely frustrated by then and decided that maybe I was all better. I stood and put some weight on the foot. Not too bad, I decided, and walked gingerly to the garage. Maybe all I needed was some movement…after all plantar fascitis is always worst in the morning when, after sleeping through the night, the tissue is stiff from a lack of a warming blood supply and only needs some movement to improve. I figured what I needed to do was rake some more leaves!

I spent the next couple of hours doing my and the neighbor’s leaves, then grabbed the ladder and climbed on the roof to do the gutters. The pitch of the roof was doing nothing good to the plantar, but it was manageable pain and so I kept going. By the time I was finished with leaves though, I knew I’d overdone it…kind of my M.O.

I needed to pick up my brother Jim’s car from Dan and drive it to my nephew’s place in Thompson. Dan had checked it over to see if it was worth sinking good money into for Ash to drive, but his conclusion was a resounding ‘no’. We drove it out there where I did some more limping around, riding an ATV, and just standing…until I just couldn’t stand it any more. The return drive was painful…just applying pressure to the accelerator was causing me to flinch. I’d placed a called to Nilesh, the sports med doc I’d coached in high school earlier in the day to see if he had Saturday office hours, and he returned my call to say he didn’t. I told him the symptoms.

“You’re an old fart. When are you going to get that straight. First you get a stress fracture in your leg and keep hiking and running, then you do this and go out and walk on it all day long. You HAVE to be smarter when you get older about these things…blah, blah, blah,” he said.

“So…what…no running tomorrow?” I asked.

I could sense him rolling his eyes through the phone and we agreed that I’d come to the office on Monday if there was no improvement…and that I’d take tomorrow off completely. “Don’t do anything,” he said as we hung up.

I’d be good. What choice did I have?

Leaf raking duration: 60 minutes.
Training Heart Rate: 70 bpm.
Calories burned during workout: 350.