After a several-month-long bout (involving 6 weeks off) of what my doctor called "presumed compartment syndrome" because the symptoms were so obviously compartment syndrome, I had the pressure test done. I had difficulty invoking my symptoms on the run that day. The pressure was not high enough to diagnose me with compartment syndrome, although it was higher than normal.
I had an MRI done and my doctor said that he saw evidence of tibial stress reactions, which would be causing my pain. He thinks I need to take a few months off to allow the stress reactions to heal.
Here's the thing: I have no pain whatsoever in my tibia. At all. My only pain is in the muscles, which swell and grow hard as I run, making it difficult for me to move them, then quickly relax within a few minutes after running. I don't understand how this entirely muscular pain could be a stress reaction.
I saw this article (http://www.ajronline.org/cgi/content/full/183/3/635) about asymptomatic tibial stress reactions, where 43% of competitive college runners without any symptoms showed tibial stress reactions in MRIs. These stress reactions never caused any damage to them. So maybe, I thought, these tibial stress reactions were just noise? Maybe they weren't really what was causing my issue?
Does anybody else have experience with this type of thing? How do tibial stress reactions normally feel? Is it common to feel no pain in the tibia?