Little Miss Diagnosis

It probably sounds crazy to put it this way but I've been pretty lucky in terms of medical diagnoses during my fairly short but eventful life.

With my car accident, it took a while for the doctors to realize that there was a really big problem.  But, once they clued in, diagnosing it was a snap and figuring out what had to be done was pretty straightforward too.  I'm not saying it was easy, painless or without stress but the diagnosis part was cut and dry.

My type one diabetes diagnosis was also pretty easy to come by.  I know this doesn't happen as easily with everyone but I walked into my doctor's office, said I was insanely thirsty, had lost 30+ pounds without trying, and basically felt like death.  The nurse pricked my finger, told me I had a BG of 35 which meant nothing to me and I was in ICU and on insulin in no time.  Again, I'm not saying it was easy but it took less than a minute from describing my symptoms to figuring out what was going on.

This latest challenge is proving to be exactly that.  A challenge. The spot in my ankle that hurts is probably the size of a loonie.  Behind the ankle bone.  It seems so damn small compared to the other stuff I've been through.  Maybe I'm just used to being a medical drama queen who ends up in ICU every decade or so but I like to know what's going on.

Here are the developments from the last few days.

 Last Friday, I went to my family doctor.  I described my running injury and, bless her heart, she didn't tell me to give up running forever.  She checked me out, asked some questions and then told me that I'm doing exactly what I should be doing to heal so she doesn't want to send me for any more tests.  In fact, she said, whatever you do - don't stop running.

What?!?

I very politely told her that I would, under no circumstances, be running until my ankle felt better.  She disagreed.  I argued back and we left it there.  She was worried that I would lose my muscle fitness.  I was worried that I would do more damage because we don't really know what's wrong.  She told me to take ibuprofen for a week and keep doing what I was doing.

I left frustrated but a little reassured because she didn't seem too worried about it.

Then I saw Geoff on Tuesday and told him that I would not be going for an MRI, ultrasound or bone scan anytime soon.  He said that I should really get a bone scan asap to rule out (or rule in I guess) the possibility of a stress fracture.

What!?!?

I thought he thought I had a sprained calf muscle?

Stress fracture is a whole other ball game.  Eight weeks off minimum and a long slow healing process.

Bloddy hell.  Good thing I didn't sign up for the Ottawa marathon in a fit of passion yesterday.

So Geoff and I talked about how to get me a proper diagnosis and he recommended that I call a local sports injury doctor who could prescribe a bone scan.  And yes, I did wonder why I was being told about this doctor five weeks after my injury occurred.  But I guess we were working on the assumption that I had a sprain which didn't really require a major intervention.  I called and, lo and behold, I'm in on Friday morning at 8:30am.  

Yep, this Friday, as in tomorrow.

So we'll see what this Dr. Prince says about everything.