Foot pain weeks after incident.

by Kirk
(Dundee Oregon, US)

Kicked the door jam while running to keep dog from puking on the carpet. Yes, you can laugh.

Got an X-Ray and it was negative so I waited, as directed, a week to resume exercise, i.e. indoor soccer. I played last night and it became half sore half numb during the game but, 45min later upon reaching home and walking to the front door it was very sore. Iced it that night and again in the morning but, the inside/top of the pinky toe up into about mid foot are very tender.

What might I have done to my foot. I have indoor soccer playoffs next week and wondering if I should muscle through the pain or if I might do more harm to my foot.

Any advice or info is appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
-Kirk

RESPONSE

Hi Kirk,

I too own a dog and understand your motives perfectly.
Anyway, as you may seen from other posts on this site, sometimes small fractures do not show up initially on x-ray and the affected area needs to be x-rayed ten days later. So one possibility is that you actually have a fracture.
The second possibility and probably the more plausible is you have done soft tissue damage to your foot which would be damage to the foot outside of bone involvement.
In the area of the foot you are talking about this would probably mean tendon or muscle belly damage to the small muscles in between the metatarsal bones.
You do not mention if during the week of rest whether or not the foot continued to hurt or if it felt pretty good.
If it was not hurting by the time you resumed soccer than this may actually be a new problem; if it was hurting to some degree right up to playing soccer again, then you probably re-aggravated the old problem.
I guess the best advice I could give you without actually examining you would be to suggest a second x-ray to make sure nothing is broken and if that is the case then you could probably suck it up and play through the pain. This concept is something athletes at all levels have to do at some point in time.
If you are willing to do that then perhaps a visit to a sports minded foot specialist would also be a good idea as he or she should be able to tape or wrap the foot in some manner in an effort to make it more comfortable for you to play. Lets face it, if the pain is too severe than you will be of no real value to your team by not being able to perform up to par.

Marc Mitnick DPM
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