Puffy Foot is Puffy

When last we saw our hero, he had attended ESCape and come home with a slightly injured foot. Picking up our story from there...

The symptoms have been changing over the past couple of weeks. The original pain has largely gone away, but my right foot has gotten yet a bit more swollen, and walking is a real problem, because I can't wear a normal shoe without it getting kind of painful.

So, I had a video meeting with a podiatrist this evening, which was very much a "good news / bad news" sort of thing.

I described the timeline and the symptoms. She examined the x-ray very, very carefully, and pointed out where the stress fracture is -- just barely visible, but a slightly light spot where she expected it to be. So yeah, the injury was worse than we originally thought.

The probably-good news is that, from the description of the current pain, she thinks (fingers crossed) that it is probably healing more or less on schedule, and if I haven't made things worse I can probably do Pennsic so long as I'm a bit careful. (When I get a little time, I need to go get a fresh x-ray, to confirm that it's healing as expected.)

The current problem is apparently the swelling itself -- as she described it, once a foot is swollen, it tends to want to stay swollen. So, rather counter-intuitively, the way to deal with the painfully puffy foot is compression socks -- applied periodically, for gradually increasingly periods, to basically squish my foot back into shape. (Plus some special shoes, which she specifically recommends for stress fractures.)

It's going to be touch-and-go, and I'm going to need to not walk my usual ten miles a day at Pennsic. But hopefully everything will improve on schedule, and I'll be able to make it as planned...