Foot Injury

[Guest guest]

Hello all,

One of the lads from my athletic club has been troubled by a

recurring foot injury for the last year and a half. I have not been

able to attend club training much during this time so do not know the

full details of his injury at the time of writing although I will see

him next week.

As far as I understand it he was originally diagnosed with a stress

fracture of the foot around 18 months ago, he was told to rest and

after a few weeks returned to running. Soon after the pain returned

and he sought the advice of a local podiatrist who I believe

diagnosed morton's neuroma. He was again told to rest and fitted with

some sort of orthosis. This led to him not running at all last year

and he has gradually returned to running again this autumn/winter.

In the last month his foot has begun hurting again and he has again

been diagnosed with a fracture and told that this was due to his

excessively high arches. I believe it was a physio who told him this

week that this problem will often recur if he continues running and

there is not much that can be done. Apparently he cited the example

of a professional footballer for Chelsea who had a similar problem,

had an operation but still suffered and had to quit football.

I apologise for the sketchy details of this enquiry as I am dealing

with information from my mum given to her form his mum, neither of

whom has any medical background. He will be 18 years old this week

and ran low 11 seconds for 100m aged 14-15. As I mentioned I have not

had chance to discuss this with him personally so will hopefully be

able to provide more details next week.

My questions are has anybody had any experience of dealing with

similar problems? Depending on exactly what is the problem is the

physio's negative prognosis accurate or is there more hope?

Again apologies for the lack of specific detail, if anyone can help

please ask me whatever questions necessary and I will ask him next

week.

Hindle

Exeter, UK.