RUNNING - The Foot Saga

I promised you a foot update in this blog, so here goes:

One of the many, many benefits of being a Hair dresser is that you talk to, and get to know, a lot of people and sometimes the knowledge or skills they have can be of benefit. In this case a client of my wife's is a nurse at Accident and Emergency so a quick text to her and I knew the perfect time to go to A and E and what to say when I got there.

You may read that and think that if I can choose when I go to A and E that its not a real emergency and you would be right. Yes, my foot hurt and it hurt a LOT but was it an emergency? No, but sometimes the stupidity of the good ol' NHS forces us to make such a decision. Initially my doctor told me to rest it for two weeks then try running again and if it still hurt then then I should call him back and he would refer me for an X-Ray. I ran after my rest period and it was still the same so I called my Doctor back as and when I had been told to do so yet he was apparently on holiday for a month and as he actually saw my foot then he would have to be the one that writes the referral. I was offered another doctor but that would be a two week wait too and I would be going back to the start of the process and taking up an appointment that someone else could have had.

So I went to A and E instead.

The nice, cross, lady at A and E had a poke about and asked me a series of questions that made no sense to me before deciding that I definitely haven't broken a bone and its all soft tissue thats causing the pain. So she sent me for an X-Ray (I know, I thought that was a bit odd too). The X-Ray confirmed that nothing in by foot was broken at the moment but there was evidence of a previous metatarsal break and several toe breaks, mostly the little toe.
She said that the way I was limping was making it worse, I was allowing bits that needed to heal to not stretch in the way they needed to. She offered me a very very different remedy to the first doctor: Get my trainers on and get moving, do my best to use my foot EXACTLY how I would if it didn't hurt and you know what? I could feel it getting better almost straight away.

Imagine how annoyed I was then when just as my right foot was showing signs of recovery while pushing my trailer back on to my drive I ran over my little toe on my left foot and broke my little toe! Its all black and crooked now but it doesn't affect my movement so that's a bonus I guess.

I took it easy though at first, it took a while to even perfect walking properly but after a few weeks, about 6 weeks after the initial injury, I was back out running!

And my god, had it got cold in those 6 weeks!