This is basically an intermediate scenario of the two I thought I’d be dealing with. Not as nearly as bad as pain without an obvious cause, but not as good as pain that can immediately be fixed with arthroscopic surgery.
Unfortunately, the main treatment for a bone bruise is time, and the recovery period is really nebulous: “Days to months” is the time frame I’ve seen quoted repeatedly online.
The orthopedist mentioned that if I’m still in a lot of pain in a couple of weeks, he’d consider giving me a cortisone injection. However, the bruise is close enough to a major tendon that reacts poorly to cortisone that he’d have to put me in a cast to prevent the cortisone from leaking into the vicinity of the tendon.
I don’t care how much it hurts, I am NOT going to be doing that.
Instead, I have to try and rest it as much as possible (real easy when my job involves running around like a crazy person a good deal of the time) and continue taking the handfuls of Advil I’ve been eating for the last week.
The orthopedist also sentenced me to another month in Physical Therapy in order to try and accelerate the healing process.
Oh goody, more getting up at 6am! I didn’t enjoy it nearly enough the first time.
At least I know what I’m dealing with now. I’m frustrated as hell that there’s no timeline for when this should actually start feeling better, but I’ll take knowing what the problem is as a consolation prize.
🙁