Well, that's settled.

So I was hoping I'd get the clean bill of health at my "last" visit to the surgeon today. I was also hoping he'd suggest I immediately begin playing soccer. I was sadly and sorely mistaken. First off, I can't go back to my running routine for what he calls "a month." I didn't bother to ask if that means until the 27th of April or just 4 weeks from today. Frankly, it doesn't matter. As usual, the x-rays look fine, the bone is healing nicely, etc. But there are still some indications of callus (sclerosis?), deposits on the inside of the bone in the area of the fracture, which seems to mean that the bone hasn't healed completely on the inside. I was annoyed that they didn't show me the x-rays this time around, but I was clever enough to look at them before I got into the office, so joke's on them. I thought they looked better than the last time, but I can definitely see where there might be some indication that things aren't completely healed yet.

Secondly, (remember the "first off"?) I'm scheduled to see the surgeon again in 6 weeks. So I don't imagine I'll get any sort of clearance to have any sort of athletic fun until then. That's early May. I guess I'll be able to get a lot of important work done in the meantime, and maybe I can pack on those elusive injury pounds that I have heard so much about....

So that's the status of my foot repair. There was no suggestion that I started back to doing things (as per my previous posts, for example) too early, only that it is better to wait another month before resuming running activities.

I just read a study yesterday that presented evidence for 15 patients who underwent my same procedure. In 6 of the cases, the patients re-fractured the same site, and all 6 of those were among the group of 9 college athletes included in the study. The study concluded that the 6 subjects who re-fractured the site had returned to activity earlier than the others (at 6 weeks instead of the "safer" 8). Of course, in this study "return to activity" means playing their sport just like before the injury. So that doesn't really change the timeline I was operating on, but it might indicate that 8 weeks before any running at all would be a better baseline in the ACC program that I have been following than the 6 weeks that they suggest.

See, I'm a medical researcher now. Brilliant. Back to my Hydatius.