Most of the runners who call me for a telemedicine second opinion ask the wrong questions.
In fact, If most of these runners asked their own doctors the right questions when they went into the doctor’s office, they likely wouldn’t even need a second opinion consultation with an expert.
The real key is to focus on activity, not injury.
In the PDF you can get below, you can ask your doctor some very specific questions to help direct your visit away form problems and toward solutions.
If you don’t stop and ask your doctor these specific questions, it’s unlikely that they’re going to offer all of these various treatment options to you because they just don’t have time to talk about it, they’re not going to bring it up. They usually bring up those things later when it’s been a long time and you’re not healing.
I spoke to someone who called me yesterday who had an injury. He’s been injured for 10 months and he said, “Well, should it take this long?” Let me think about it. No matter what the injury is and how long it’s been, 10 months is way too long. 10 months is too long to be injured when you’re a runner.
Think about right now. If your injury, your foot, your ankle, your Achilles tendon, whatever it is that’s bothering you right now, if you thought about what it would be like if this thing was continuing to heal and still wasn’t better and you still weren’t running 10 months from now, what would that be like for you?
If you really think about how agonizing that would be, you understand how important it would be to start considering those more advanced treatments and the things that can actually get you back on track right now, you don’t need to wait.
Go print out the top 10 questions a runner should ask when going to the doctor, fill it out, take it with you, fill it out as you’re at the doctor’s office to fill in those specific questions, and use that to help you get back on track and to develop a plan with your doctor to get back to running sooner.
If you have a question that you would like answered as a future addition of the Doc On The Run Podcast, send it to me PodcastQuestion@docontherun.com. And then make sure you join me for the next edition of the Doc On The Run Podcast!