A lot of things in my home are falling apart. The water heater broke. The washing machine randomly fills with water and sometimes dumps it out all over the floor. One of our cats is dying. There’s something about a pandemic…
And speaking of quarantine, a few months ago, I started quarantine jogging. I might be the only one. Then again, I might not. I’m really quite the quarantine cliche - I started jogging, I started making bread regularly, I started several projects that I haven’t finished, and I don’t leave the house much.
I already wrote lots of posts about not leaving the house. Maybe someday, I’ll write a post about baking bread. Or maybe I already did, and I forgot. I also wrote some stuff about jogging. And now, I’m going to write about jogging.
You might recall that I was running up a hill sometimes. I told my friend in Santa Fe, and he told me about a jogging app called “Couch to 5k.” He’s not the kind of guy who would ever really jog, definitely not a 5k, but back in the day, we did call him “Couch” - so, I guess it makes sense that he would have stumbled across the app by accident (maybe when he was googling himself), and then started jogging by accident (maybe when he had to go to the bathroom real bad), or maybe because the app told him to.
Anyway, I installed the app (there are actually several C25k apps, and I installed one of them). It’s pretty cool - you put in your earbuds, put on some music, and the app tells you when to walk and when to jog. You do it three days a week for about 30 minutes. It starts you off alternating short intervals of jogging and walking, and at the end of eight weeks, you’re running a 5k. Allegedly.
I’ve always known that I disliked jogging, but it turns out I actually don’t dislike jogging. I kinda like it. And so I jogged three days a week for almost 8 weeks. On my 23rd jog (which, with just a bit of simple math, turns out to be the penultimate day of my 8 week program), I was supposed to jog for 28 minutes, sandwiched between five minutes of warmup and cool-down walking. I was about 25 minutes into the jogging part when my right leg/ankle started to hurt just a bit. I kept jogging. It started to hurt a bit more. I kept jogging. I was one day away from my first goal of running 5k, and I hadn’t missed a day or cheated even a tiny bit so far, so I wasn’t about to give up a mere 3 minutes from the end of this one. The more I ran, the more it hurt. Soon I was jog-limping (or is it limp-jogging?). But still, I didn’t stop.
I made it to the end of the 28 minutes, and started my five-or-so-minute walk up the hill back to my house. I was in quite a bit of pain. I wasn’t sure I was actually going to make it home. I thought about sitting down and calling my wife to come pick me up about three blocks from our house, but I toughed it out and dragged my ass all the way back home.
And after a shower and a few minutes of rest, I couldn’t walk at all.
The next day was Saturday, but I have my doctor’s cell phone number, so I called and he met me at his office. He said my problem was a couple of tendons, but there was a slight, tiny, very small chance of a stress fracture, but I would probably be a whole lot better in three days.
In three days, I was a whole lot better - I could walk, kinda. But not really enough better, cuz the pain. I spent a lot of time icing and elevating and complaining. All three of those things helped. But… not enough to keep me from complaining. I called my doctor and he told me to make an appointment with a “specialist.” I did.
Turns out the “specialist” is a surgeon, who works at a surgery center, and the first appointment was a couple of weeks out. I knew what a surgeon was going to offer as a solution. Was it gonna be a pound cake recipe? Nope. Was it gonna be a ride on a unicorn? Nope. When all you have is a hammer…
So while I waited for the appointment, I went to see a physical therapist. He thought it was probably tendinopathy, which is either a fancy way of saying tendonitis or, perhaps, it’s not. I really don’t know. But the PT didn’t seem completely sure. He dug in my tendons, which hurt quite a bit. He dug in my bones, which hurt quite a bit. He said again, not quite sounding certain, that he thought it was tendinopathy. I mean, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t impressed with his vocabulary. But it was the “not quite sounding certain” part that had me a bit concerned.
Actually, I really like my PT. He’s a good PT and a good guy. I’ve seen him a bunch over the past few years, sometimes so he could help repair my old body, and sometimes so he could help prevent the need for repair in my son’s young body. He thought I should go see the surgeon, get some “imaging.” So I did.
I went into this surgery center, which is full of masked-staff and masked-patients and masked-protocols. It was weird. I sat and waited. They took a few x-rays. I sat and waited. Finally, the doctor came in. He asked me a few questions. He showed me the x-rays. He pointed to a barely-noticeable whitish blurry-line-kinda-thing on one of my bones. “See that?” “Barely.” “It’s a stress fracture.”
Oops, I broke my leg.
Turns out that when you’re kinda old (I am), and you start jogging during quarantine (I did), and you never really ran before (I didn’t), well… sometimes you break (I did).
The fracture is in my fibula, which, in the ankle/foot/leg/specialist business, is called a “non-weight-bearing-bone.” The doc said I really shouldn’t put any weight on it for at least a month. “Wait a minute, doc,” I said (to myself), “how exactly, if I’m not inclined to follow your expert advice, would I, specifically, put weight on a, um… non-weight-bearing-bone?” Maybe these words don’t mean what I think they mean (inconceivable). Or maybe it’s like Monster Island.
Turns out, you put weight on it by doing such things as standing, walking, running, playing soccer, and a few other things I can’t remember at the moment. Anyway, now I’m in a walking boot. And before you get too excited - it’s a boot you wear when you walk (and stand, and sit, and stuff). It’s NOT a boot that walks, which would be, um… kinda weird, I guess.
So if you’ve been paying attention, you might remember when the PT dug in my tendons and then dug in my bones. My bones! My effing broken bone! No wonder it hurt.
Actually, the boot’s not too bad. It’s hot and it’s heavy and it makes one hip a lot higher than the other so I’m starting to develop other problems, but when I wear it, my leg doesn’t hurt. So there’s that.
I spend my days working, wearing my boot, and thinking about how my right leg is so much hotter than the rest of my body. I spend my evenings drinking martinis, wearing my boot, and thinking about how my right leg is so much hotter than the rest of my body.
I mean, in the grand scheme of things, I’ve got it pretty good: I have a broken leg, we have no hot water, our washing machine flooded our laundry room, one of our cats is dying, and… oh yeah, there’s a FUCKING PANDEMIC!
Have a great day!