Navicular Stress Fracture: Advice Wanted

wejo--As a coach who had an athlete in a similar situation, one podiatrist told him do the boot/stim thing. Another podiatrist heard this and said PIN IT! ONLY WAY IT WILL HEAL! So, after wasting a year (and season) in the boot, he had the surgery with the pin and was back at it, 100 percent. I think that should tell you what to do ASAP. Good luck.

Wejo,

I've had personal experience with this injury twice. The first time was freshman year of HS. I trained through a month of severe pain before our the state championship track meet. It hurt little when I ran, but was very painful when walking or when starting to put weight on it after sitting down. It was diagnosed with a bone scan, but the X-Ray did show a hair-line fracture.

I put it in the boot after the state meet, and missed the following cross country season and most of the following track season. The boot was off at the beginning of track season and I trained for middle distance races on a Schwinn Airdyne stationary bike. I think I began running around mid-May and was able to make the 4x400 relay team that qualified for the state meet that year. However, I did not have the endurance for anything over 800m. All in all, I spent 11 months of not running.

The second incident was freshman year of college. Strangely, this time it was in the other foot. The pain began just a week before the conference meet. I trained that week and ran in the conference meet, but didn't qualify to run in any meets beyond that point, so I called it a season.

I got into the boot again for treatment. This time, since I didn't run as long with the pain, it healed much quicker. I wasn't much of a XC guy in college, so I don't remember exactly when I was able to start training seriously again. I do know that the when our middle-distance group started to get going in October, I was not inhibited by the injury. So, the second time, I missed less than 5 months of training.

In my experience, this has not been an injury to fool around with. I run with orthotics to prevent this from happening in the future.

In your case, you seem to have caught it early, and might not have too much time off.

Hopefully this helps. Good luck.

Best of luck with the healing process...

Regarding the HSA, you may want to go through insurance for a couple of reasons:

-The insurance company often negotiates cheaper rates than a walk-in will pay for a service

-Your HSA funds are tax free (although you may be using them as an investment vehicle)

-It may actually be illegal to say you don't have insurance when you do. Not sure about just deciding not to use it...

That is an outdated reference but it is well written.

So far it looks like it is 1:1 boot/bone stim vs surgery.

How about a poll on the front page with a prediction contest on the outcome ;)

There have been a couple threads on navicular stress fractures. I had one in my right ankle during my senior year of high school which I managed to run on until I fractured it completely during a race. I had a very similar experience with many others: it didn't show up on an X-Ray or MRI (obviously) and I was on crutches for 3 weeks before I was diagnosed after I finally got a bone scan. I was in a boot for about 2 months (no bone stimulator) and I'm happy to say that it healed completely. I've had no problems with that ankle since then (6 years ago). I also improved considerably over the course of those 6 years. There's light at the end of the tunnel, but I think the key is to be as patient as possible with the boot. Best of luck.

If your doctor suggests the surgery, it is probably the best option. It is not fun when the bone fails to heal and can actually get worse, causing you to be out of running longer than you would have imagined. Ultimately it's your decision, but it's not something worth messing around with. Good luck with the healing process.

Here's another vote for the pin. Why screw around hoping it's going to heal when you can guarantee it will heal?

Seems like a no-brainer to me. Sometimes I don't understand how you republicans think. :-)

hey ace, i vote for the boot.

get the surgery done, recover faster.

A) boots suck

B) probably wont work

C) bone stimulators are expensive, and might not work.

get the screw!

i can only say the bone stim worked wonders when i broke my ankle clean in half tripping on the rail of a track doing repeats. i did the bone stim for 30-60 minutes and was in a boot (so i could stim) and biked and was back in SIX weeks.

good luck.

Wejo,

Would you say your pain was similar to that of plantar fascitis?

All the best on mending.

wejo- it seems you've had this problem for quite a while:

"wejo

RE: accessory navicular/navicular pain 5/2/2004 4:21PM - in reply to Person Man Reply | Return to Index | Report Post

My outdoor track season my freshman year didn't happend because of an accessory navicular. Just had pain in the top/side of the foot. (How far on the side is your pain? If I flex my foot up my pain was to the right of that tendon that appears on the top/side of your foot.)

I tried different stuff. Then I went home and saw Dr. Souryal in Dallas who did an xray or perhaps a cat scan and said I had an accessory navicular. He said that it was an extra piece of bones on the top of the foot.

He said I had two options 1) have surgery or 2)wait and it was likely that the chip would move and no longer be a problem.

I tried option 2 and was a bit skeptical but after some period of time off (maybe a few months i'm not sure) I was fine.

At the time he made it sound like my situation was really rare and he said he wrote me up in some medical journal but i have no idea what that means.

Good luck."

Whichever way you go, i hope you heal up fast and come back like a Flanagan! (she had the bone removed)

Shalane did not have an accessory navicular, it was a different bone.

I'm actually going through the same exact thing right now. I'm a junior in college and last year during outdoor track I started to have the same symptoms you have described in my right foot. I had a bone scan which confirmed I have a navicular stress fracture.

I got through the season and spent the entire month of June in a boot. I started running gradually at the start of July and the pain came back after about a week. I went to see an orthopedic guy about it who reccomended I stay off it for another month. I got back in the boot and had to declare for a medical hardship for XC. I did quite a bit of cross training and went to see a guy about custom orthotics. When I started running again, the orthotics seemed to help but as the indoor season progressed, the pain escalated yet again. At this point I'm just trying to get through the next two weeks until after indoor nationals and then take a week off before starting outdoor.

I've pretty much come to the realization that it's something I'm just going to have to live with the rest of my running career. I've taken time off, it hasn't helped much and I refuse to go back into a boot. So unless someone knows of a miracle cure, I'm pretty much going to be trying to run through the pain for the next couple years.

Have personal experience with this one. The boot/stim won't heal an old fracture (3 months non-running boot time will be wasted). So go with the surgery - healing time is actually faster than the boot, and it WILL NEVER BREAK AGAIN!

Didn't read through others advice, ethically etc. I can't post actual comments on recommendations and truthfully I don't think anyone quite could unless they knew more.

I don know that depending on where the pod came from he does surgeries a certain way but there are many ways to do surgeries. Get at least 1 more opinion from a very well known surgical pod or an orthopedic foot and ankle specialist. The orthos usually have superior surgical or have pioneered superior surgical techniques in my opinion however the pods have went through about a thousand more foot and or ankle surgeries more in training then the foot and ankle ortho specialist on average.

Been there, done that wrote:

Have personal experience with this one. The boot/stim won't heal an old fracture (3 months non-running boot time will be wasted). So go with the surgery - healing time is actually faster than the boot, and it WILL NEVER BREAK AGAIN!

Did you have the screw put in?

I think my doctor is trying to just turn a quick buck. It's bfull1 who posts on here. He used to have good intentions on here, giving out free medical advice, but I think he got into some poker debts.

I feel like he's trying to drum up business on here to fuel his poker habit. Originally I thought his buddy was going to do the surgery but now he says will be doing it, and I should just pay him cash and we can do it as his office instead of the hospital.

surgery!!!!!!!!!!!

WEJO - don't even think about the crap boot and the ghetto bone stim.

PS, in regards to paying for the bone stimulator...I currently have the exogen 4000 and the rep (northeast) told me that I could write them a letter when I eventually get the bill after insurance and they would throw it out the window. Is it BS, I don't know. However, he seemed adamant about writing them a letter. They cost about $2,000-4,000 and my insurance covered all but $600-750, which is still a pretty penny.