Tibial Stress Fracture NOT Healing…What Gives?

Well said and thought out.

Getting out of bed and then running my hand down with an even pressure on my shin proved to be invaluable. Compare the last couple of workout days as to what was performed to whether the pain was more intense or less and shorter. When the shins were more sensitive to the touch, I would check what might have caused that. Conversely, if the shins were less painful, I knew I could incorporate that or those recent workouts into my program with little worry,. A well kept notebook would finally give me the workouts that fit me and which wouldn't even though they might work for someone else.

Lastly, in my forty plus years of coaching, bad shin splints or stress fractures differ only in damage and are at least 95% the fault of the coach by giving athletes workouts that they can't recover fast enough from before you hit them with more stress. And I will stick with my original point that prolonged rest tells you nothing because when you start up again, the same thing will happen again. Athletes treating themselves without someone watching over them is insane.

I agree. I really should have seen somebody about that pain. I just came to LR, read a whole lot, and improvised.

I just went back to my running journal from that year. The stress fracture showed up in late December, a few days after a very hard 15 miler. I spent the next week or two thinking that a few days off and lot of ice would cure it. Within a week I'd put myself on the DL. I did, in fact, do a few workouts on the elliptical, but within a week or two I'd scotched that. After six or seven weeks with nothing except a few exercycle spin sessions, I started biking and quickly built up to 100+ mpw for the next few weeks. By early April I was salting in an occasional slow jog of 1-3 miles. By late April I was beginning to train again. I was icing after every run, and when the slightest ache materialized in that shin, I took a day or two off. By July I was training normally and pain free.

And yes, I started to take a calcium supplement. I don't do that any more, but I did it for at least five years after that incident.

The single hardest lesson was: you're hurt. Just STOP RUNNING. You can't finesse a stress fracture. You can't sneak around behinds its back. You can't "sort of" run, or "sort of" jog, and hope that it will go away. You basically have to forget about running.

You think it's the worst thing in the world. But it's not. And there will be more running.

That's one of the best postings I have read on this site. Very insightful, honest and with full intent to help others out without being snarky.

When we could walk without pain even though pressing down on the tibia was still painful, but the length of from no pain to pain to again no pain was getting progressively shorter. It does hop around, but its the length of the pain that matters! Once we could walk without pain (that was our starting point), we would walk for a mile, jogging slowly for the length between lamp poles, then walk again for as long as we liked and repeat, but never jogging more than one lamp pole.

Getting up the next morning before walking, check the length of the pain. The main thing is to remember that even when you are sleeping you are still using the muscles in the lower leg and that there is a lack of blood supply in that region so it is easy to cause more damage than you can repair.

Lastly, it is runners with a high work ethic who come down with stress fractures and shin splints. These are the runners that need to be kept in the sport, no matter how athletic they are.

Sorry about your leggy. I agree with ultradude. All of the cross training may still be keeping you in some way under-fuelled, placing additional demands, taking away from injury healing, placing too much stress on it. Personally I would stop ALL training (I mean 'stretches', exercises, anything). Let your body heal. Eat well. Hydrate well. Rest well. You need to let it heal. Ditch the elliptical.

Ditch the bike too. Just rest. If you absolutely have to train, I'd swim - zero pressure on it. Don't push off the walls either.

Thanks everyone for helping continued input! I really appreciate all of the information and commiseration alike.

I hit 16+ weeks since diagnosis this week, with an X-Ray today showing a huge, clearly visible hump on both the medial and posterior sides of the tibia. My orthopedist was now officially able to put in a code for a non-healing fracture, which should hopefully get insurance to cough up for a bone stimulator device.

Sadly, she said that’s getting on toward our last option before we start looking at putting an intermedullary nail down the bone. :(

Before they screw a tension rod in your shin try to get a 2nd opinion 

Good news today; insurance finally agreed to cough up for a bone stimulator and it’s currently its way. 

Hi BrokenLeggy

My situation is very similar to yours, except that mine has been going on for 15 months now. It looks like I'm running out of options. Can I ask if your bone stimulator worked for you or if you underwent Intermedullary Nailing?

Sorry to hear about your situation! I know how hard it is and how much you’re probably wishing you were back running.

The bone stimulator worked like a charm and had me back running within 3 weeks. Have your doctor code it as non-union fracture, and insurance will hopefully pay for it!