Suspicion confirmed

After a 5 week layoff from running I decided to try a few short jogs. They were 800m jogging with 800m of walking in between. The shin would begin to throb immediately as I started the jogging portion. I tried a brand new pair of Mizuno Nirvana 4 (my fave shoe BTW). I left the regular laces in them rather than installing the iBungees that I love. Made no difference. However, the pain remained. This was Saturday, May 16. After this run I sat down to do my icing routine and noticed that an area on the front of my shin was numb. The numbness extended 2-3 inches above and below the primary pain point on my shin. Which, by the way, was easily noted by a butter bean sized knot which has been there since late February.

Monday morning I called my regular doctor to ask if I should see him or be referred to an orthopedic doc. The office called back and referred me to Dr Easom at Middle Georgia Orthopedic. My appointment was scheduled for Tuesday May 19 at 2pm. I had a peace about the visit because I knew I'd finally know for sure what was wrong and looked forward to hearing, one way or another, what was wrong but, moreso, when I could start running again.

I arrived at MidGAOrtho at 1:45 to fill out the paperwork. I was taken back to a small room and asked a series of questions by a nurse. Then, she led me to the xray room where they took two xrays of my left leg. The first was from straight above the leg. The other shot was of the side of my left leg. I went back to the small room and waited about 5 minutes before Dr Easom came in. He and I know each other very well because I have chaired a golf tournament that is in memory of daughter, Macy, whom he lost to pediatric cancer in 2006. He asked me to take him through the last few months of training leading up to Snickers. He asked about the distances of my long training runs and when I think the pains began. After sharing all that he put the two xray slides on the lightbox. He immediately said 'well Tommy...you have a stress fracture in your left tibia...no doubt about it....'. 'He added I'm having you get a bone scan so I can determine the extent of the fracture and then we'll know when you can resume running.'

He was encouraging and said this is a very common injury and that I shouldn't feel that I did anything wrong because this just happens sometimes to distance runners. He turned towards the xrays again and said he was highly impressed by the thickness of the structural integrity of my shin bone and that it was evident I have put in some long mileage. I asked if that was a bad thing and he said 'oh no...its a very good thing...this tells me you have done a good job with your training...' Of course, I had to ask 'ok doc...if i've done such a good job then why?' He laughed and said 'T...this could've started when you went from pavement to grass or grass to pavement one day on a run...you probably didn't feel anything but the initial crack started...'.

So, I have a bone scan on Friday May 29th. I get an injection of some radioactive stuff at 7:30am and then go back at 10am to have the scan done. My followup with Doc Easom is June 2nd at 4pm. At this followup I hope to learn how long before I can begin running.....until then, all i can do is hope and pray it won't be long.