Autumn

After the pain in August, I decided to stop running for an extended period. Kept to stationary biking and road biking for exercise. These exercises did not pose a problem, and the pain did not reemerge. On Setp. 14, I participated in a 100 mile road bike ride. I wore clipless pedals for the duration of the race. I didn't explicitly notice any pain in my foot while riding. I also do not remember any specific incident that would draw attention for injury. After the bike ride though, my left foot began to hurt again. It started very slowly at first, and did not become a problem until about 24 hours after the end of the bike ride. My foot showed slight signs of swelling and discoloration over my top right midfoot region. I assumed I had reinjured my past stress fracture and immediately put the walking boot back on. I wore the walking boot for the remainder of Sept.

After wearing the boot and experiencing pain in my left foot for 3 weeks, I decided to go back to the orthopedics. I explained my situation and the doctor was perplexed. She said it was not a re-injury of my second metatarsal stress fracture (as it is near impossible to get a stress fracture in the same location as a previous fracture). Her diagnosis was that I was experiencing some sort of inflammation or arthritis in my tarso-metatsal joint. This diagnosis mainly stemmed from my MRI results in May 2015, which showed degenerative changes in this joint. My doctor suggested that to relieve the pain, and hopefully shut down the inflammatory process, she inject a cortisone shot into my joint. Being that I had no other options, I agreed. She continued with the procedure and told me I could experience some initial soreness and pain for a few days to a week, but that I would most likely experience relief of symptoms for 2-3 weeks. After that period, she said that my symptoms may reemerge. Then we would need to reexamine my foot to find an alternate prognosis.