A little over a month ago, I spent two full days in Wisconsin Dells at the waterparks. I told you about the trip, but I don’t think I mentioned how much pain I was in. After two full days of walking, I could barely walk. My foot was hurting a lot. I never really noticed how inactive I’ve gotten until I had to be active. So many times I chalked up my foot pain to bunions, arthritis, and fibromyalgia. But this time I felt something was really wrong because one foot was hurting much more than the other.

The following day I reached out to my doctor to get an appointment with a podiatrist. They questioned why I wanted a referral. I told them that I was still having foot pain like I mentioned at my last physical in November when they took X-rays of my foot. At the time, my doctor couldn’t find anything that would cause a lot of pain. It took me a month to get an appointment with the foot doctor.

By the time I got to my appointment, I was feeling a lot better. But I went in for another set of X-rays and waited over an hour to see the doctor who was behind schedule. I thought perhaps I was wasting his time. When the doctor came in, he told me I had a stress fracture. What??!?? How did that happen? I was going to have to wear a boot for 6 weeks and then come in for more X-rays to see if it was healing properly.

I have no idea how I fractured my foot. My feet started hurting when I was running long distance training for a 50k. But that was years ago. And aren’t your feet supposed to hurt if you are running 30 miles on them? The only other thing I could remember happening was having a large water bottle fall onto my foot. But again, that was years ago. How did I have a fractured foot and not even know about it?

It’s been 3 years since I ran. Gradually I stopped going on walks too because it hurt and I was having GI issues. I went from thinking I was wasting the doctor’s time to being angry with myself for not going in sooner. Hopefully now it will finally be able to heal and I can get on with life.

I stopped running right after Angel moved back home and started running. We enjoyed running together for several months. This weekend she will be running her first marathon and I will be supporting her every step of the way. I was instrumental in starting the fire that ignited her passion, and now I will be handing over the baton.