Question:
Stress fracture pain, negative bone scan...what's going on?
I've been running competitively for the past eight years. The first four, I was relatively healthy. I had some small patella femoral pain complications due to combining ice hockey goal tending and running, but aside from having to pop ibuprofen and use the elliptial a couple times a week, I was fine. Four years ago, I developed stress fractures. And I had nasty cases of them. Every time I would start running again, I would get at least one in each leg. I've had them in both tibia and fibula.
There is no good reason for the stress fractures. I water run obsessively (which blows, but has kept me in decent enough shape to race at nationals) and have not run more than two days consecutively since I got my first stress fractures in '06. I have a very healthy diet and wear the proper orthodics to help combat my pronated feet.
After a disastrous season in which I ran a grand total of ~15 miles between the second week of July and October (4k, 3x 5k, and a 6k), I finally went in to see the doctor again. He sent me to the radiologist for a bone scan and it came back negative.
I am in excruciating pain. It bothers me when I walk, sleep, study. The few running attempts I have made have been unbearable. It's the exact same pain that I've always experienced with my stress fractures, the only difference right now (and this has changed in the month I've taken off of running) is that the pain isn't constant. It flares up randomly and once it does, it is every bit as painful as it was when I had stress fractures. I've read that false negatives are extremely rare in bone scans, so what else could it be?
Asked by dougherty - 0 answers - 2 years 27 weeks ago
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