OK, so you broke your foot, and the doctor told you that you broke your metatarsal, and the you hear the horrible words : Pinning metatarsal . Gosh, sorry to hear about that, so in a few words this means that you are in trouble my friend and get ready for a lot of pain.
Isn’t this what you wanted to read? Well, pinning metatarsal is not the end of the game, but if you have a decision or a call about the final of pinning metatarsal or not pinning it, my advice is to get always a second opinion. My case was pretty scary, I was going down the stairs of my house, yep the stairs that I take every day and boom! I fell and I broke my metatarsal and it hurt like hell…. I called my wife, she is a nurse and she told me to go to the hospital. Once I arrived to the hospital, the doctors and the nurses look at my foot, and they already knew that it was a bad metatarsal brake. Ready for Metatarsal treatment? I don’t think so, mainly because the doctors where confused. Should we pin the metatarsal or not?
So that is the question: pinning your bones in an operation or not…
The problem of pinning metatarsal is that is not guarantee to work, and it is painful, and the catch is that you will be waiting for a lot of time to see if it works or not. In many times if your fracture is so strong then pinning the metatarsal is the only option, and that’s why you really want to be sure, to speak to your doctor to understand if he/she thinks that you could recover by yourself. You will be amazed how sometimes your body manages to recover and in that way you could potentially prevent this sort of procedure.
OK, so once you brake any of your metatarsals, your life will be hell for a few weeks, or even months. One of the things that doctors don’t tell you is that in fact after 4 or 5 weeks, you are able to walk if you want to. How? Well thanks to metatarsal safety boots . So what exactly is a metatarsal safety boots . Well, it is a sort of shoe, way stronger that prevents that your foot moves to the side where you broke your metatarsal. So in fact what the metatarsal safety boots is doing is avoiding that you re-brake your metatarsal bone.
When I broke my metatarsal, one of the things that safe me was to start walking as soon as possible. You may think that this theory is pretty crazy, but what you have to realize is how amazing the human body is and the fast capacity the body has to recover and to adapt, by walking you send new white cells and red cells to your foot and it’s start rebuilding the bone faster. I’m not going to lie to you, the risk can be quite clear: What about if by walking I create a bigger mess?
Well, that is when the metatarsal safety boots . In a few words, don’t even dream to talk without the metatarsal safety boots, because mainly you will be asking for trouble. The boots take a while to put on, and to be honest is not the most comfortable boot in the world, but guess what… is does the job, so that is the most important thing.
What is a metatarsal stress fracture ? Well, to start is not the worst fracture you can have in the metatarsal, so in a strange kind of way, you should be a bit happy… but anyway, here we go: A metatarsal stress fracture used to be call as “marching fractures” and they used to be very common in poor soldiers victims of marching in extreme conditions. in the Metatarsal stress fracture, the second metatarsal bone is usually the victim. Metatarsal stress fracture refers to fractures in the long bones of the foot, so this means in a few words, that the part you injure yourself is that the area where the ankle links with the toes. One of the main problems of this injury is that you can have it and not know that you have it. A bit strange isn’t? Well, When walking, running, jumping and landing, much stress is placed on the forefoot. Metatarsal stress fracture may not become apparent on x-rays until a few weeks after the injury.
Metatarsal stress fractures could happen create injuries if, let’s say, you increased the amount of training (let say you are into sports) or you don’t rest (like soldier) or in many strange cases with by walking a lot with bad shoes) So what happens is the muscles give up and then the bones take the stress and slowly but surely the bones will create very small fractures.
The good point is that this is not such a big fracture and Metatarsal stress fracture can be avoided and it is easy solved by just stopping any serious physical activity and resting properly.
The reason why I decide to start this blog is because mainly I had a fifth metatarsal fracture and let me tell you it wasn’t any pretty. If you are reading this because you have at the moment a fifth metatarsal fracture, llet me tell you: I understand what you are feeling. It is not easy, and the pain doesn’t help.
I think one of the worst things that happens is also the emotional part, when you brake your metatarsal, you also loose confidence and you realize quickly how fragile you are. It sucks because deep inside they tell you that there is nothing that you can do to recover. Well my theory is a bit different to what doctors keep telling you. In my case my doctors was a bit of a witch and told me that simply I just had to wait to recover. If you don’t recover after 3 months we will have to operate.
Are you kidding me?
I was in panic, and everyone told me that with a fifth metatarsal fracture, you can’t really speed time, well in my case I was scuba diving after just 6 weeks after. You may wonder how… well, I did everything I could to recover as fast as possible, even doing very non “normal” procedures. I was simply focus in one thing only: to heal.
Now my fifth metatarsal fracture was very bad, so bad that I was almost ready to be send to the surgeon, but they decided at last moment to give the foot a chance of healing by itself.
Later on in this blog I will write more about how I manage to heal quicker of my nasty fifth metatarsal fracture . Thanks for reading and see you very soon.
