Seriously? Injured again?

Seriously, This is not how I envisioned starting out my summer.

now I have a matching set

At this point last year I was in excruciating pain my right foot. I was nursing a horrible injury and refusing to admit there was a problem. I finally brought myself to the doctor some time in August, and wound up in my first round of treatments and boots. The treatments lasted until March of this year.

I was looking forward to having a little recovery time in May and June. And after that recovery period, I felt strong. I kept focusing my attention on the strengthening of my right foot and how the pain seemed to disappear more and more each day.

Which I guess is why when I started to get a little nagging feeling in the center of my left foot, I brushed it off. It didn't hurt too bad. It was just a strange nagging sensation. It didn't hurt when I ran, for the most part, it only hurt when I flexed my foot just so, all in all, I could overlook it.

But then last week I tried to ramp up my mileage. I wound up succeeding in upping my mileage, though I barely made it halfway to my goal mileage before my back started to cause problems.

Which is strange in itself. I didn't even feel much pain in my back. I was just always short of breath when I stood up or I moved the wrong way. I was exhausted all the time and found that laying motionless helped. I actually thought it was asthma at first. Then I realized that the shortness of breath wasn't responding to medication, and it was only happening if I moved certain ways or if I was sitting up for long periods of time.  I have a back problem, and have for a long time. I have a high thresh-hold for pain in my back, I guess it just took me a little while to realize what was going on.

And once I did, I chalked it up to repetitive impact from running on sidewalks (instead of on the paved streets like I prefer). I mean, that's plausible, right? But then I realized that the shortness of breath was only coming when I was trying to stand up straight or put weight on my right foot. Well that didn't make any sense. I thought that maybe my muscles were spasming so much on my lower left side that it was just making it difficult to stand straight.

I NEVER once thought there might be something else going on.

Until I realized that the nagging sensation in my foot had gotten worse. It was throbbing all the time and felt like there was some crepitation seeping in. I couldn't hear anything, but it certainly felt like a whole bunch of crackling.

So I made an appt with the foot dr again. I knew even before the appt was made what the solution was going to be, although I didn't know what the diagnosis was. I thought it might be extensor tendonitis, but there was no swelling whatsoever. Trust me, after over a year of dealing with problems with my left foot, I am highly attuned to swelling, and there was none.

So I go to the appt, do some xrays. Nothing is broken, but he did find evidence of an acute sprain deep inside the center of my left foot. How the heck?

Wearing another boot for at least 2 more weeks was not how I envisioned this summer starting off. The temporary solution is to stay off of it completely until at least the followup and let it heal.

But now I am starting to be filled with the not-good-enoughs. Man, I didn't realize that even writing that last sentence would bring tears to my eyes. But its time that I finally admit it, maybe I'm just not good enough for this running thing. Maybe I'm not strong enough to run, I'm not fit enough, I'm too heavy, I'm too slow, I'm just not enough.

But I love to do it. I don't know where this leaves me.