My Torn Calf Muscle - Part II: My Sports Doctor Appointment

My Torn Calf Muscle - Part I: Doctor Referral

November 3rd - Initial Appointment with a Sports Doctor

Funny to feel happy about seeing a doctor!

I was assigned to Dr. J. I arrived at my appointment armed with plenty of questions and a calendar record of all my runs, my injury dates, etc. The doctor laughed at my preparedness and we got down to business.

The highlights:

• I made an error in judgment running "too soon" after my injury at the half marathon. She reprimanded me this - LOL! However, I defended myself by telling her that if my calf had hurt, I would never have continued running. Unfortunately, it only felt like a tight muscle at the time, a cramp, rather than an injury. She agreed that hindsight is 20/20. :)

• I explained that in the time between my walk-in clinic appointment and this one, my left calf had actually 'worsened.' I experienced sharp, shooting pains up my leg when cooking at Thanksgiving (on my feet in the kitchen for a longer-than-normal time period), and that it bothered me (ached; shooting pains; tightening along the calf in waves), usually after I walked the dogs and after yoga, even though it felt fine while participating in physical activity.

• I repeated to her what the walk-in clinic doctor had advised me. She frowned and made a few facial expressions, indicating her disapproval of this advice. However, she didn't say anything negative about it, but simply said that I was able to be pro-active about my healing.

• My absence from running will be for a longer period of time. :( I was 4-1/2 weeks into my "6 weeks off" advice from the walk-in clinic. Dr. J told me that I would need to be off longer, that it would be closer to 8-9 weeks before I could run again on a treadmill with a physiotherapist in a controlled setting. I didn't like hearing that, but I admit it made sense to me. My calf/leg has hurt more in the last two weeks that it did while I was running on it (!!) so I could feel that it wasn't going to be read for a return to running within another week or so.

• Dr. J spent more time studying and touching my calf, and said that she could feel the difference between my right and left calf. She could also see an area on my hurt leg that was lightly protruding (swelling). She also poked around my calf, establishing where it hurt and where it did not.

• When I told Dr. J about my achilles tendon injury from last year, and how I had been reading about injuries stemming from a previous injury or connected to another problem area in the leg. She was interested in this, asked me several questions about it, and spent a little time poking around my left achilles tendon.

So this is where I am at ... I have:

• an ultrasound booked in a week for my calf and achilles tendon
• a physiotherapy appointment booked for the day after my ultrasound
• a follow-up appointment with Dr. J in two weeks from my initial appointment with her.

I was told that my leg will heal and that I will run again. :) However, this part of my leg might be a little bit of an issue for me in the future, in that I will need to really warm it up in the future (pay extra attention to ensuring it is warmed up well before a run).

I am feeling much better about my leg. I have gone from being told "nothing you can do about it" to an ultrasound (to see what it really looks like in there), several appointments with a doctor specializing in sports medicine, and a series of physiotherapy appointments. I am especially pleased with the ultrasound because I want a picture of what has happened to my muscle.

Physiotherapy Referral Notes:

DIAGNOSIS - L calf strain 7-1/2 weeks ago; suspect partial tear at MTJ 4-1/2 weeks ago

L Achilles pain 1 year ago - resolved on it own

WEIGHT BEARING STATUS: full

INVESTIGATIONS AND RESULTS: US ordered

COMMENTS: stretches; strengthening; ROM, proprioception; modalities

NEXT PHYSICIAN APPOINTMENT: 10 days post US

My Torn Calf Muscle - Part I: Doctor Referral

I am sooooo behind on my posts. :( Funny how my running injury has killed my desire to post on my blog, too. :(

I have three race posts to edit and publish: my Springbank Half Marathon from September, my Festival City 10K, and my missed 10K in Grand Bend - the Pinery Provincial Park Run. I keep promising to get this done!

However, I am also behind on my posts on doctor's appointments, physio, etc. so I am going to jump in at this point. because my race reports are already five weeks+ late. I should get the more 'timely' posts done first and then catch up on the others when I can. That's my theory anyway! :)

OCTOBER 19th - Walk-in Clinic Doctor Visit

In London, we are extremely fortunate to have the Fowler-Kennedy Clinic. From the moment that I realized I truly had an injury, I knew that I wanted to be treated by the FKC.

I called the clinic and was told that I needed a referral from my doctor. Because they still had a few appointments available at the end of the week, I went to a walk-in clinic that day rather than booking an appointment with my family doctor. I wanted a quick referral. :)

My appointment with the doctor at the walk-in clinic was quick. He barely looked at my calf, putting his hand around it and squeezing it a few times. We spent our time together discussing my injury. He was nice, but dismissive of referring me to the FKC - "They are only going to tell you what I am about to tell you." The doctor told me that runners hurt themselves 'all the time' in this area, that it was a common injury, and all that I needed to do was to stop running for 6 weeks and my leg would be fine. I told him that I was interested in facilitating the healing, that there must be something I could do besides ice packs/heating packs (which is what he also advised). He showed me the basic calf stretch most runners are familiar with - the lean against the wall , bend one leg, keep the other leg straight and stretch. He said if I had extended benefits, I could take advantage of physiotherapy and then wrote me a physio referral.

However, I did stress that I still wanted to see a sports doctor about my torn calf muscle, and a referral to the FKC was the main reason I had come into the clinic. He had no problem with my request for a second opinion, but it did leave me feeling a little mixed. My gut feeling is that my left achilles tendon injury at this time last year is connected to my current torn calf muscle on the same leg. I could follow this doctor's advice, and just not run for six weeks (with the caveat of seeing him again in six weeks if it was still bothering me), similar to what I did last year (the "do-nothing-but-rest-and-no-running" approach), or I could see this as a sign that my left leg needs to be treated professionally.

As it turns out, it took a week for the FKC to call me with an appointment with a sports doctor. In the interim, I started thinking that my referral was going to be 'refused.' :( Silly of me, I know, but this reflects how the seeds of doubt were planted by the walk-in clinic doctor that I might be making this injury more serious than it really was.