This post is to help anyone that is dealing with plantar fasciitis or something similar - I’ve had an uncommon experience that I am hoping will benefit some people by sharing. Since the end of November I’ve been dealing with some pain in my heel, which I was told is plantar fasciitis. I had been doing a workout in spikes, in some colder conditions (~35 degrees), for the first time in about 8-9 months. During the 8th interval I felt a pull/strain in my heel about 5 steps in, tried to keep going and couldn’t put any weight on my foot. I limped home, went to urgent care and got an x-ray - only a bone spur showed up which is pretty typical.
I went to an orthopedist, he had me get more X-Rays, said nothing showed up, sent me to PT to treat plantar fasciitis. No one seemed phased by the sudden onset of pain. After 6 weeks of PT, no relief of pain, I switched to another PT (it was a more convenient location that had ultrasound therapy). I went there for another 6 weeks, and this PT encouraged me to keep running on it - after every attempted effort I was sidelined for 2-3 days with quite a bit of pain. So I called it quits with trying to run through it, and got on the bike (trainer) to put in some miles. At this point I was 4 months in to almost no running (about 51 miles of attempted “test” runs during that time which were encouraged by doctors, PT, etc). I finally got in to see a podiatrist, he gave me some steroids to reduce inflammation but there was not reduction of pain at all. I tried to ice it, 3x20 min on, 20 min off for 2-3 times per day, and that didn’t make a dent either.
Finally my podiatrist tells me to get an MRI. I get the results back in 4 days and they tell me I tore my plantar fascia, as well as my pollicis flexor brevis (which didn’t make sense because that’s in your hand?) at the insertional point of the calcaneus. That being said, 6-8 weeks in the boot and should be ok. I wanted to post this as a warning because it took much longer than it should have to get in the boot and start healing because I didn’t emphasize enough at the beginning that the pain all came on suddenly, and felt like a pull or strain.
Now from here, I am curious to hear if anyone has any recovery advice, I.e. getting back to running when it’s healed. My plan is to just run short/on feel, every other day, bike the off days and double on the bike on running days, until I can slowly build back in to it. Any other advice or suggestions are more than welcomed!