Katie's foot

After 4 weeks of pain and 4 doctor visits, we finally now know that Katie has a stress fracture in her foot. She has no idea how or when it happened. Her foot just started hurting her when she walked on it. We wrapped it and iced it on our own for a week or so before it started getting swollen and we decided we better get her in to get it checked. The doctor did an x-ray but didn't see anything at that point so he put her in a funny boot shoe and sent her home with a prescription for some pain meds. He suggested we take her to a foot doctor. I got her into a podiatrist the following Tuesday. Another x-ray was taken but again, although the swelling showed up this time, nothing that would indicate anything more than maybe a torn ligament. This doctor put her in a "soft cast" and told her to come back in a week to follow up. She went back and the foot was still hurting and still swollen. He said it was too soon for another x-ray and that if it was indeed fractured, it wouldn't show up for at least 2-weeks. So, he gave her a frankenstein boot to wear (that's what it looked like to us anyway) and sent her home to wait it out for another week. She would not wear the frankenstein boot. Truthfully, I can't blame her, it is quite bulky and hard to get around in. So, another week went by of pain and continued swelling. She would come home from work almost in tears because of having to be on her foot for so long. Yesterday we returned for our follow up visit. This time the x-ray showed the fracture. Horray! We now know what it is. So now what? He said that since the fracture is only on one bone, they normally don't do much but let nature take it's course. You could see on the x-ray where the bone was already forming a spur, for a better lack of word, on each side of the fracture to start the healing process. He told her to keep it wrapped in an ace bandage, stay off of it as much as possible, take Ibuprofen for the swelling, and he want's to re-x-ray it in 2 weeks.

Modern medicine is great but it still takes time to figure some things out. At least we now know what we're dealing with. It will hopefully heal well without any further complications.