I’m putting this in IMHO because I’m looking for opinions, not advice.
I was watching Dancing w/Stars when they said Evan what’shis-name had broken two toes in rehearsal, but was dancing anyway. About a week after that I myself broke two toes. And I’m thinking, if he had broken toes the second week, and kept dancing, not to mention skating, how did they heal? Took me three weeks before I could put normal shoes on, and somebody told me they weren’t really healed for like six weeks.
So, your toe (not the big toe)is broken. How long before you think you can dance/run/go hiking?
I broke my baby toe when I was about 20 and I took the dog for walks, did normal housework, went to work (on your feet all day job) within a day or two. And yeah, it hurt a ton, it took a way longer time to heal than it probably should have since I was on my feet so much, probably 3 months, maybe a bit more.
I’ve always been able to wear normal shoes when I’ve had a broken toe, and I didn’t dance or anything, but I walked around the normal amount by the same or next day. Taping the toes together helped. I suspect that in Lysacek’s case, they just taped those toes together/to another toe firmly and gave him some nice pain meds. Being an athlete, he’s probably had similar or worse injuries to work through.
I’ve broken several toes - including my right great toe. They hurt, but never kept me from doing anything. Of course I’m an idiot, and continuing to do BJJ with a broken great toe is the reason that joint is totally destroyed and will need to be fused! :rolleyes:
I used to be a Tae Kwon Do practitioner, and broke toes on a regular basis. By my experience:
Sharp pain lasts about a week.
Intense throbbing about two weeks after that.
Throbbing as an annoyance for about 2 more weeks.
Complete lack of pain by about 8 weeks.
As far as doing stuff, when I had a onesie break, I was sidelined about two weeks. While in a tournament, I broke two toes in three places, plus a connected metatarsal. That had me down for a month before I could resume non-contact exercise (still painful), and 6 weeks before I could spar again, with pain.
I’ve broken toes a coupla times. Taped tightly to an adjoining toe(s), you gimp a bit and have some pain, but I never changed my routine.
Best though, was when my son (circa age 6) had heard that a bone was stronger after a break. My toe was 90% healed, and he thought it would be super-strong. So he climbed up on the back of the couch and took a leap, landing as hard as possible on my bum foot. He re-broke my toe, learning a bit about anatomy, physiology, and swearing.
My last broken toe happened as I was leaving BJJ class…hooked it under a mat and snap, little toe bent 90 degrees outward for an instant.
I’ve had a few broken toes in my life, luckily all relatively minor. As I recall the doctors all had me do a “biological splint” (tape the broken toe to an adjacent healthy toe), stay off it as much as possible and I had to wear one of those orthopedic shoes you get for foot injuries (it’s a big goofy sandal with velcro straps - stays on without squeezing the foot). Took about 6-8 weeks for the injury to heal and to get back to gentle exercise, then gradually ramp up to more vigorous activity.
The one that truly sucked was in my freshman year at college - moving from central California to Illinois and then having to cope with my first “real winter” while on crutches and having to buy a pair of warm boots that would fit on an injured foot.
Same thing happened to me in PE class at school – we were taking gymnastics and my little toe on my right foot got snagged in a mat fold. I stood up and broke it. It was pointing right, and I walked over to the gym teacher and mentioned that I had broken a toe. He asked me how I was sure, and I said, “Well, look at it.” He took one look at the way it was pointing out and I thought he was going to faint. I knew enough to tape it to the next one, so I asked him if he had a roll of tape. When I bent the toe back to tape it, he turned his head totally away. I thought it was kind of a funny way for a gym teacher to act.
The support of the tape allowed me to walk around on it almost immediately, and I kept it taped for about a week. After that, all was fine.
I busted an ankle one January while in college in central IL and living off campus. It was great! All I needed to do was crutch to the main drag, stick my crutches in a snowbank and look pitiful, and in less than a minute some driver who had been on crutches at some point in their life would pick me up and drive me to the door of wherever I was heading. Seriously, I got around more quickly that month than at any other time (including when I had my own car as I didn’t need to worry about parking!)
I broke the two smallest toes on my left foot in 1973. Wearing a regular shoe was no problem and actually anything that held them in place and still felt good to them. That was 37 years ago and I still have twinges – just little reminders that all of my foot should go on the same side of a chair leg at the same time.
What a coincidence. I saw this thread yesterday, just before I would have started a thread entitled “Broken or badly injured toe: augh.”
Big toe on my right foot. Stumbled on some shallow steps at a client’s house. Didn’t mention it because I thought the (at first, relatively mild) pain would wear off. Wasn’t until I was driving away that I noticed it hurt just to press down on the gas pedal. And by the time I got to the bank, I could barely hobble from my car to the building and back.
Had a second client after that. Fancies herself a healer, so she put some mentholated gunk on it and taped the (still normal-looking) big toe to the next one. Pain only increased, but undoubtedly, based on what came after, in spite rather than because of this. After an hour and a half, second client noticed that I could barely move around, and let me go early.
Long story short, for a few hours any movement below the knee was excruciating. If any part of my foot collided with anything, :eek: I couldn’t even lie down because my foot brushing against the covers from the inside was :eek: Then all of a sudden, I noticed the regular throbbing subside before it reached its peak. Within half an hour, I was able to limp around by keeping my movements as low-impact as possible. I see it as, it started to get better because it couldn’t get any worse, and it could only stay bad for so long. Later that night, checked and found a tremendous, very dark bruise. And some very minor swelling, but nothing that won’t still fit in my shoes. So, not broken, just badly injured. :eek:
All right, I can usually figure out acronyms, but what is BJJ?
Also, the reason I couldn’t put a regular shoe on was that on the way toward breaking my toes, the iron also whacked the top of my foot–not broken, but dislocated something (I’m not sure what) and there was lots of swelling.
I did get it checked out, because in college I broke something leading to my toe (the super-numus(?) of my fifth metatarsal) and I did get a cast on that. Which exposed my toes. It happened, of course, in the dead of winter. I put a fuzzy mitten on it, and people laughed at me in every single class. Especially my dance class.
I did the taping and padding routine for months. No matter how hard I tried, every couple weeks I would stop walking too fast, let my shoe touch something besides the ground or look at my foot sideways and …OUCH…the pain would kick right up again and I would feel like it was just broken.
After about 6 months I mentioned it to my doctor and got the annoying advice to “be more careful”.
Nonetheless, a few months later it felt much better and I was able to stop the taping and padding routine.
I broke my middle toe after swinging a bare foot into something iron. ouch. I padded it and was pissed that I had to wait six weeks to break in my new sandles. It felt okay in 3 or 4 weeks…except that five years later it still aches once in a while on rainy days.
