I thought, on today’s post, I was going to share with you all about Unplug Day.

But I’m not.

Rob and I try to plan one about once a month, but it probably happens about once a quarter. I thought, on today’s post, I was going to tell you about my plans to run again. Well, that’s the good news. But it might be a while yet…

The Good News

My appointment with my orthopedic surgeon this past week went well. After my descriptions of pain and strength tests, he determined that it’s just a flare up and that I can probably expect that to happen once or twice a year. I can minimize that by continuing to do my PT exercises {which I had abandoned altogether while looking for the “perfect” yoga class} and walking. He said that most people are able to go back to their normal activities.

Yay, running!

Normally, when a pain and inflammation occurs, he recommends taking Advil three times a day for three days and keep activity to a minimum. That should be enough to help. {NOTE: I’m merely writing this for my own memory’s sake. This is what my doctor has recommended for me. If you have similar symptoms, you should see your doctor and follow the advice that is given to you.} This time around, though, he prescribed a steroid dose pack. It is helping tremendously.

So I put together my plan to do my PT exercises and walking and then slowly move back into running again. Perhaps I would even run the Challenge Obesity 5k this April. It’s the race where I ran my first 5k and where I walked it last year not long after back surgery. No matter what, I’ll at least walk it this year.

Well, at least I think I will…

The Bad News

Remember when I started running again and stopped due to back pain when I nearly made it to the 5k mark? I was frustrated, annoyed, upset. I found walking to be boring.

Now I just wish I could walk!

Let me explain. On Friday night, as I was getting ready for bed, I stubbed my pinky toe. I hit it on the hard wooden doggie steps to our bed. OUCH! {Our bed is high and these steps also helped me get into bed after my back surgery.} I’m a bit of a klutz at times and I’ve done this before. So I just cursed and went to bed. At about 1am, I woke up and realized it still hurt. Bad. I considered icing it, but was too tired and went back to sleep.

6am rolled around and the pain was bad enough that I couldn’t go back to sleep. I can’t even express how difficult it was to walk.

Difficult to walk!

Looks like while I wanted to run again so badly, I wasn’t being grateful enough about being able to walk. Today, I am grateful for my toes. Sometimes I forget how important they are to walk!

So I immediately broke the Unplug rule for Saturday and got online to find out what was wrong. At this point, it felt like it was broken. But I’ve never had a broken bone in my body, so how would I know? Hopefully, it was just sprained. What I did know is that there wasn’t much that could be done for broken toes, so there was no point in heading to the emergency room.

Here are the basics of what I did learn:
{Take this with a grain of salt for as much as you can believe to be accurate on the interwebs.}

• A broken toe is generally taped to the adjoining toe and takes about six weeks to heal.
• A sprained toe generally hurts the most within the first 48 hours, but should heal in about 5 to 10 days.
• The best course of action now is to ice every two hours and keep the foot elevated.

I love me the google. I am grateful for the google. The area on my foot where my two toes meet is black and blue and the pinky is swollen. I decided to spare you and not take a photo.

This is what this means for me:

• I’ve been laid up all weekend, icing and elevating.
• I’m on steroids for the back, so I can’t take any pain killers. But the steroids should help with the inflammation in the toe!
• I’ll call my doctor on Monday morning to make an appointment.
• I most likely won’t even be able to walk on the treadmill for a week.
• But that’s better than six weeks off for a broken toe. Let’s hope it heals quickly!

To be continued…

~

Now for this week’s:

Without any exercise, I’m going to have to be really smart and diligent with my eating this week…

Food

Dinners:

• Monday – Beef in Red Wine Sauce
• Tuesday – We’ll eat here because this is where we’ll be taking our  puppy painting class!
• Wednesday – Pork Chops and a Vegetable of Rob’s choice
• Thursday – Leftovers or chicken quesadillas for me!
• Friday – TBD (My friend Stacy is in town!)
• Saturday and Sunday – TBD

Lunches:

• Leftovers
• Snack Lunches {aka Bento Boxes} – Any combination of: tuna salad made with homemade olive oil mayo, a new version of my Poorman’s Caprese {with salsa!}, hard boiled eggs, applesauce, piece of dark chocolate, nuts and maybe some soup.

Breakfasts:

• I have a lot of options available and will make them depending on what I am in the mood/have time for:
  • PB Toast
  • Magic Smoothies
  • This Blueberry Banana Oatmeal Smoothie
  • Scrambled eggs with cheese, onions and spinach  – one of my favorites!
  • Granola with milk

Fitness

• Yeah. Not so much. Will walk if I can. Will try to do any PT exercises that don’t put any pressure on that foot.

Have you ever broken a toe before?

Cheers~
Carrie