The Stress Injury

So, about a month ago, D started complaining that his foot hurt, right along the ball of his foot. He was still able to walk on it and pretty much play on it whenever he wanted, so I just disregarded it. About a week or so after he first started complaining about it, we literally crawled into the house after being at cub scouts. Apparently, he had landed on it funny as he was walking home and that was his limit. This happened the night before I was suppose to fly out with L on our trip to Montana, so I decided I had better get him into Urgent care that night, rather than waiting to see our doctor the following week. So, off we went. After a couple of hours, and x-rays they determined that it wasn't broken. I could have told him this because he was still limping around on it a little bit and I knew if it was broken, he wouldn't have, plus he would have been screaming a lot more. They sent us home with instructions to rest it. Dave got him some crutches so he wouldn't have to use it as much. The weekend went by and I got home. He was acting just fine again (limping around, but still able to use it when he wanted...meaning when there was a football around). The next day after school, L called on her way home from school saying that Jill said they could go to the park with her for a little while. I happily continued my cleaning project and thought nothing more about the fact that none of my kids were home from school. About 45 minutes later, I got another call. This time from a very teary D. He had been struggling to get home all that time (please note we live about 1/4 mile to the school and it usually takes us about 5-10 max to walk to school). He had only made is as far as my sisters house and was begging me to come and pick him up. I decided it was time to go back to the doctor. I called our PCP, but he was out of town, so back to urgent care we went. Once again, they did x-rays, we waited only to find out again, it wasn't broken (again, I already knew that). The next day I made an appointment with the podiatrist. After another round of x-rays, he determined that he had a stress injury on his growth plates of his foot. The only way for it to heal was rest and the only way to guarantee that he would stay off it was to put it in a cast for 2 weeks. I think D felt a little cool about getting a cast, plus a little bit of justification! Naturally, it really didn't take long for the novelty of the cast to wear off. Thankfully it was only for 2 weeks! He had cracked the heel of the cast just 4 days after he got it!

Here it is a day or 2 before he got it off. I can't imagine what it would have looked like after 6-8 weeks!! I shudder at the thought.

Here he is getting it off. He was pretty stressed about the saw, as is evident in his face in these pictures. He has sworn he will never get another cast because that was just too scary!
So, now the cast is off. He is still limping around and is saying that the ball of his foot is still a little sore, but mostly now he is complaining about his heel. Hopefully this goes away or else we may be up for a whole new round of this!