Achilles Tendonitis

I was super tired this morning when I woke up.  Super tired. Tired enough to hit the snooze for 40 minutes straight.  Work was ROUGH yesterday, crazy crazy things went down.  But as I am bound HIPPA, I cannot tell the stories of my job.  Suffice it to say summer has returned to Portland and it is now officially Trauma season.  Whee.

Anyway, when I finally dragged my protesting and still sleepy body from my bed (at 6:15 mind you) I noticed something was off with my right ankle.  It hurt.  I figured I slept strangely, and chalked it up to getting old and thought nothing of it as I sleepily went through my morning routine. 

When it still hurt two hours later, post caffeine induced wake up and leisurely jaunt around the hospital I decided to have it looked at.  And that my friends is when it comes in handy to work with doctors all day long.  I went to the new intern, who despite being on the trauma service is specializing in orthopaedics, and complained:

"My ankle hurts.  What's wrong with it?"  (golly how we medical professionals love that question.)

"Um. Can you tell me more about it? How long has it been hurting?"

"Just this morning.  It's achy, right along my achilles tendon."

"Ah.  Do you run?"

"Yes. I'm training for a marathon.

"Okay, have you recently increased your mileage?"

"Uh...kinda?"

"Do you stretch?"

"Yes. Mostly.....usually."

"Have your calves been tight recently?"

"Yes. I complain about it all the time."

"You probably have achilles tendonitis."

(He then made me move my ankle all around.  It moves, but isn't super comfortable to do so.  Especially when flexing my foot. )

"Yup.  Probably achilles tendonitis."

"I hope this isn't the part where you tell me to rest and to ease up on training because I'm running Hood to Coast in a month, and with a bunch of strangers, so I can't let them down. "

"It is.  I'm telling you not to run today, and to listen to your body.  If you don't take this seriously now you could end up having surgery on your ankle and then where would you be?"

"Snarky comment regarding how I've been a RN since he started med school."

Silence.

"I'm sorry.  I appreciate you looking at my ankle.  I just don't want to slow down."

So. Yeah. Achilles tendonitis.  And I'm finally meeting with Allison again on Weds.  We'll see how all this goes.  I'm a little nervous.  I had pretty severe shoulder problems when I was a swimmer that started with tendonitis...so I probably should (for once in my life) listen to what the doctor tells me to do.




Okay.  That sounds terrible.  I mean listen to a doctor when it comes to MY health.  I'm pretty good at taking the advice of the doctors when it comes to my patients.