I’m spending my lunch writing this post alone in my office. Mostly because I don’t want to have to repeat this story a million times, but also because I’m feeling a little sorry for myself.
Two years ago I had surgery on my right foot to remove one of my sesamoid bones.
It started out as a stress fracture, but went untreated for a while. I was so overweight at the time I figured my feet just hurt from holding me up all the time. Eventually the bone shattered into a bunch of pieces. It was in so many tiny pieces that it showed up as normal on an X-ray. It took months of tests to rule out everything from gout to lupus. Finally, an MRI revealed that my sesamoid bone was destroyed. I went off to surgery to have the bone fragments removed and a tendon rerouted to take its place.
About a month ago I started feeling a familiar pain, this time in my left foot. I kept telling myself it would get better. Nope. I went to my doctor today and he confirmed I don’t have a stress fracture, but I have broken a sesamoid bone in my left foot. I went early enough that this one hasn’t shattered, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. He put me in an air cast and told me to not do anything for the next three weeks. After that he will determine if I need surgery or not.
There was nothing I could do to prevent this from happening. My sesamoid bones are basically defective, meaning I was just made this way. The right one probably broke under the pressure of all the extra weight I was carrying. My left one probably broke under the pressure from exercising all the time. Bottom line is that it would have happened eventually. Nonetheless, it’s heartbreaking to hit this roadblock after working so hard and coming so close to my weight-loss goal. I only have 20 lbs to go. Am I going to take a time out from exercising and gain a bunch of weight?
I don’t know how to take a break from exercising anymore. The longest I’ve gone in the past year without working out at all is five days. Three weeks is an eternity. After that I will either be having surgery or doomed to a bike or the pool. Just like that, I’m no longer training for a half-marathon.
Let the waiting game begin.
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