If you get a fracture of the metatarsal, you have to make sure that it’s healed before you start running on it.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a stress fracture, or a traumatic fracture where you stepped in a hole, tripped or fell off a ladder.
Deciding when it appears to be healed enough to withstand the forces of running is the key.
The most common way doctors decide when the fracture is fully healed is by taking an X-ray.
When can I start running after a metatarsal fracture if I have no healing on the X-ray?
Well, that’s a great question and that’s what we’re talking about today on the Doc On The Run Podcast.
View Details »Let’s say you’re out on a run and you start getting some aching pain in the ball of the foot. It persists for a while.
It’s not really that bad. Your foot is not killing you. But it starts to bother you more and more over the course of a few weeks.
Being proactive, you see a podiatrist. The podiatrist tells you that he thinks you have something called a Morton’s neuroma. So he does an x-ray of your foot and what do you see? Well, nothing. Why is that?
When are x-rays useful for a runner with a Morton’s neuroma?
Well, that’s what we’re talking about today on the Doc On The Run Podcast.
View Details »The radiologist reading your MRI knows nothing about your problem.
The only clues a radiologist gets about your injury are described in the clinical history section of the MRI order from your doctor.
I just got off a call with a runner who had gotten an MRI order from his doctor. He had a long history of injury but the only description on the MRI order was “Concern for fracture.”
This runner had more than just a concern for a possible fracture.
But because there was such a limited description for the radiologist, the injured runner was understandably irritated and frustrated that the radiologist didn’t have the full information.
I will admit that I also get very upset about this when I’m looking for something obscure that the radiologist is likely to miss, unless it’s on their radar.
But there is an up-side to everything!
Today on the Doc On The Run podcast, we’re talking about the benefit of your radiologist being clueless.
View Details »I was just on a call with a runner who called me for a consultation of an ankle injury.
He had some funny looking stuff on his ankle x-rays. That was why he was scheduling a second opinion.
The bummer in this whole thing was that he actually told me that maybe 10 years ago or so, he’d had a similar ankle injury.
He’s pretty sure it was on the same side, but he wasn’t really sure because he didn’t have a copy of the x-rays.
Today on the Doc on the Run Podcast, we’re talking about why you should always ask for copies of your x-rays.
View Details »I do lots of running injury second opinions and I do most of those over webcam. Sometimes I do them over phone, but webcam’s way better because I can see you, we can talk, I can show you some stuff on screen, share if I need to, and I can look at stuff that you have that might be really useful for me to help you figure out what’s going on. Whether you’re seeing me for a webcam visit or if you’re seeing your doctor in your neighborhood, there are four things that you really should make sure that you have together and that you take to get your most valuable running injury second opinion. Today on the Doc On The Run podcast, we’re talking about the four things you need for a running injury second opinion.
View Details »The worst runner to call me for a second opinion is someone who has been in a fracture walking boot or not running for 12 weeks or so. Why is that so bad? Well, they’re extremely aggravated. They’ve seen at least one doctor, probably a bunch of times. They’ve probably had several x-rays. They’ve been waiting and waiting but they’re not getting better and they’re very upset about that. Today on the Doc On The Run podcast, we’re talking about how waiting for an x-ray can cause you to miss your window with a stress fracture.
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