Out of Action

Harri has had a hard start to the year with getting an injury in his foot not long after school started for the year.  One day while I was at work he sent me a message to tell me that he had hurt his foot.  He's always getting injuries through playing sport, so I didn't think much of it but he kept complaining about it for a couple of days.  He said he was playing basketball at school with his mates, and as he started walking back to go to class he felt a pain in his foot.


We went to the doctor and he said that it was either tendinitis or a stress fracture.  He was hoping that it was 'just' tendinitis and said if it was, that it would feel better in a few days if he rested it.  Harri was told he couldn't play any sport, but Harri could hardly walk without any pain, so he already knew that sport was definitely out.

It didn't feel any better, so we went back to the doctor and had an X-ray done which didn't show  anything, which is apparently common when you have a stress fracture, because it doesn't show up until it starts healing.   After chatting with one of the head doctors at the surgery, they decided to avoid a bone density scan and MRI because of the cost as it was presenting as a stress fracture, and either way the treatment would be the same.  They sent us to a guy who makes orthotics and he discovered that Harri has a condition called hallux rigidis which is when your toes are really stiff. He said that because his toes aren't very flexible it puts pressure into his foot, which would've caused the stress fracture.  He asked to see my toes and I also have the same problem, so it's obviously a genetic condition. 


He said that making him some orthotics would help with the problem with his toes.  He used the orthotics for a week to see if that would help it to heal, but his foot wasn't getting any better.  So the guy who made the orthotics for him, decided it was time for a moon boot so that his foot could actually have a chance at healing. 

He said that once it healed then the orthotics should help to avoid it happening again. By this stage Harri was actually keen to get into the moon boot as he had so much pain for so many weeks, and was keen to start feeling normal again.

After a couple of weeks in the moon boot his foot started to feel much better.  Because he hadn't played sport for about 6-7 weeks he was really nervous about getting back into it again, and knew that he wouldn't be able to just start playing basketball again at the level he is used to.  We decided to go to a physio who we had been told was great with basketball injuries, and he gave him a lot of different exercises to do to strengthen up his feet, toes and ankles and to get his fitness back up again.

The physio agreed that he couldn't just go straight back into playing basketball, but had a plan of getting him back into it safely.  We've now had two physio appointments and he's still got another week or so of sitting out,  but he's so happy that he can start getting back into it soon.

It's been a long 11 weeks or so, especially as Harri loves his sport so much.   He's found it really hard to not be as active as he's used to.  Hopefully he can start playing basketball again in the next couple of weeks and he won't have to stress about it happening again.