Advice

[willieg33]

Hi, I am just entering my senior year and need some advice. For about two years I have had a ongoing injury with my deltoid ligament. The problem is when I got a MRI there was no problems showing. Whenever I run or stand for a long time I get sharp pain. I have tried everything from physical therapy to seeing a orthopedic surgeon at mass general hospital who has given me 2 cortosone shots and he said there is no more harm I can do to it. I am in acupuncture right now, which has given me some relief but i am only half way done. At the moment I am in contact with a seal motivator who wants to start training. Do you guys think that I should push through it and see what I can do before next year or go to college and try to train while their before and hopefully recover fully before I join.

My other quesiton is I have basically completed phase 2 on Stew Smith's for upperbody and swimming with and without fins. Do you think I should continue training or take a break for a little bit and let my entire body fully recover?

Sorry for the long post and your replies mean a lot to me. Thanks again and I appreciate and respect every bit of what you guys do and hopefully be a part of it someday.

~Willie

[snow85]

Alright thanks. That is one reason why I left the doctor told me that the only thing left to do was give me another cortosone shot and cut open my foot and try to find out what was wrong. That is when I decided that he didn't really know what to do and I considered other types of rehibilitation.

willieg33 quote taken from other thread.

[snow85]

thanks, kiddo.

first of all, your delt lig. is on the medial side of your leg. so... how did you do this? what was, or do you think was, the initial injury?

stop going to the general hospital. you need to find an ortho, preferably one who specializes in sports med, as ankle injuries are as common as doorknobs. (and yes, everyone gets a turn.)

eversion injuries, which are usually what damages the delt lig. are less common than inversion (what you would think of as twisting your ankle to the outside), and they're also more serious. the ligaments are shorter and don't give as much, and the supporting muscles aren't typically as strong. that being said, the medial ligaments are strong, and require a great deal of force to be injured. because of that, they often take longer to heal. additionally, while you can injure lateral ligs without breaking your leg, a lot of medial lig injuries are accompanied by broken bones, or by the ligaments pulling bits of bone off-- known as an avulsion fracutre. (usually happens where the ligaments attach to bone.) just the way we're built.

1. how do you know it's the deltoid ligament?

2. tell me where it hurts, how "deep" it hurts, what specifically causes it to hurt (ie. when i stick my finger in this groove and push hard), etc.

tell me about your physical therapy and what they said.

you actually could have torn the ligament, but that should have shown up on the MRI. did you ever have a follow-up MRI or follow-up x-rays? did you have x-rays to begin with?

a talar fracture is also possible-- and those don't always show up right away.
does your ankle catch, lock, or swell?

[willieg33]

Two years ago I was walking down the stairs in my high school and when I went to step my heel caught the stair and hyperextended. I iced it for a week or two and the pain stopped. Out of no where I got this sharp pain in this isolated spot. When I went to the orthepedic surgeon he pushed around on my foot and he hit the deltoid ligament he said. When he did this I had excruciating pain in that specific spot. This specific spot is the only place it every hurts. Whenever you push on that part of the ligament it feels like a knife or a sharp pain. Also whenever I stand for a long time at work or after I run it will start to hurt and not go away until the next day. The pain is not that deep it is right when you touch that specific part of the ligament. The pain is only in a isolated dime size circle on my foot. My foot also feels like it will break if I turn or move it after long periods of time. I had 1 x-ray a week after I got the injury. Then one year after when I went to the orthapedic surgeon I got another x-ray nothing showed up. Two months after that I got a MRI and nothing showed up except what he thought was a little possible inflamation near the ligament.

After this he sent me to physical therapy for 3 months. He had me doing stretches, icing my foot, and doing STIM. My physical therapist told me it would get better and I improved my movement. I completed physical therapy with a little relief but not much and my foot still has not healed to this day.

At the moment I am doing acupuncture and my foot has been feeling a little bit better but I am only half way through with the sessions. She claims she can cure me but I have no idea since I have been through so much.

[Trident2010]

Two years ago I was walking down the stairs in my high school and when I went to step my heel caught the stair and hyperextended. I iced it for a week or two and the pain stopped. Out of no where I got this sharp pain in this isolated spot. When I went to the orthepedic surgeon he pushed around on my foot and he hit the deltoid ligament he said. When he did this I had excruciating pain in that specific spot. This specific spot is the only place it every hurts. Whenever you push on that part of the ligament it feels like a knife or a sharp pain. Also whenever I stand for a long time at work or after I run it will start to hurt and not go away until the next day. The pain is not that deep it is right when you touch that specific part of the ligament. The pain is only in a isolated dime size circle on my foot. My foot also feels like it will break if I turn or move it after long periods of time. I had 1 x-ray a week after I got the injury. Then one year after when I went to the orthapedic surgeon I got another x-ray nothing showed up. Two months after that I got a MRI and nothing showed up except what he thought was a little possible inflamation near the ligament.

After this he sent me to physical therapy for 3 months. He had me doing stretches, icing my foot, and doing STIM. My physical therapist told me it would get better and I improved my movement. I completed physical therapy with a little relief but not much and my foot still has not healed to this day.

At the moment I am doing acupuncture and my foot has been feeling a little bit better but I am only half way through with the sessions. She claims she can cure me but I have no idea since I have been through so much.

I am not a doctor, but if orthapedic surgeon said nothing was wrong then my guess is that it could be that you have a bad running technique, or you could be wearing the wrong shoes.

[willieg33]

Well the problem is for more than around a year and a half I did not run I decided to try it and i worked up to around 4 miles, but my foot started to really bug me more. I got custom orthodics from the doctors buisness and orthdodic accomodated shoes for my injury and it didn't help. I still use the orthdoics because of the support.

[snow85]

hm. just to make sure you're using the correct terminology-- we're talking about a place on the inside of your leg, below the "ankle bone", slightly toward your toes, right?

i'm thinking a few things here. if you fractured that bone, your docs may not have been looking for the break, because it can break on either side, and it is a teeny, tiny, piece that breaks off. you might want to call the ortho and have him re-check the film, specifically for a talus fracture, on the grounds that you're still in a lot of pain. then find a new doc and get a 2nd opinion. you're in MA, so like i tell everyone else, call one of the university's athletic training rooms, find out who their team doc is, and go see that person.

did you do any sort of exercises where you go up on your toes or anything to help strengthen the ligaments and muscles? if so, how did those feel? when you ended therapy, did you tell your therapist that you were still in pain? if not, why not? if so, what did the person say? were you ever given a brace?

what did your ortho say when you were released from his care, and he told you that you didn't have to come back anymore?

understand that ligaments can take far longer to heal than broken bones, and you've been walking on this one since you injured it.

chin up, kiddo. i know it's tough to have a nagging injury, but don't give up.

[willieg33]

Yes the injury runs right below the ankle bone. I actually had to go to physical therpay twice at mass general but for a different injury and that physical therapist told me to continue the exercises for my foot and I did for a few more months but I stopped after it didn't get any better. Mass general eventually released me and told me to try cortosone and I did. It worked alright for six months and then I got one more that didn't do anything. On the x-ray there was a chipped part of a bone floating aroudn but they told me that most people have it and it's common. The surgeon never released me from his care and he just makes me report back to him every so often and this has continued for the last year.

thanks

[willieg33]

I am looking into getting a second opinion because he told me straight up that he was stumped and the only thing left for him to do was to go into my foot and try to see if anything is wrong. I don't think that I should just let my foot get cut up by him when he admitted that he didn't know what was wrong.

[Swifty]

Get a second opinion?

[willieg33]

Well techniqually I have had 2 opinions already. I went to childrens hospital and the sports medacine doctor told me that nothing was wrong and it would go away on its own. I stopped seeing him after I saw my physician and she told us that this doctor has had many bad reviews from patients. That is when I went to mass general and now I am on way to getting a third opinion and still no one knows what is wrong.

[TheJesterIM]

Having an injury and training on its never a good idea,

take snows advice and go to an ortho, i know you said you'd already been to one but go to a different one and like swifty said get a second opinion.

you gotta treat your body like a temple, and you gotta take injuries seriously or you'll never attain the kind of fitness you need.

ask any guy on this board that trains seriously, he can probably tell you about an injury he has had that he needed to let heal before he could continue his journey. i know i've had several, and in my experience its better to take care of them let them heal and then train rather than doing a balancing act and get something else hurt.

[snow85]

this was two years ago, for a simple ankle injury. you need a new doctor, stat.

bone chips aren't as normal as you think. they happen when force on a ligament is so strong that it causes it to pull away from the bone, and break the bone in the process. did they tell you where that bone chip came from?

[Trident2010]

Having an injury and training on its never a good idea,

take snows advice and go to an ortho, i know you said you'd already been to one but go to a different one and like swifty said get a second opinion.

you gotta treat your body like a temple, and you gotta take injuries seriously or you'll never attain the kind of fitness you need.

ask any guy on this board that trains seriously, he can probably tell you about an injury he has had that he needed to let heal before he could continue his journey. i know i've had several, and in my experience its better to take care of them let them heal and then train rather than doing a balancing act and get something else hurt.

Yep, I have been sitting on my *** for a week now cause of a strained deltoid. You learn that when you injure yourself to any extent, you stop what your doing, give it time to heal, and then figure out what you need to do to make sure it doesn't happen again.

[Trident2010]

willieg33,

A guy at my gym got into a car wreck at the age of 16 and hurt a few ligaments in his shoulder. To this day his one shoulder is weaker then the other. If you can't find a single doctor to tell you that something is wrong, then look into something you may be doing wrong in your training. Maybe you need to adjust your running technique. I'm just throwing stuff out there though.

Edit: That guy is 35 now.