Forums >Health and Nutrition>Deep Muscle/Bone bruising
A Saucy Wench
A friend of mine got kicked by a horse 4 months ago and has deep muscle bruising that will not heal. Not just discolored, still very painful to the touch. She has been to 6 doctors and has had multiple xrays and there is no fracture or calcification. Pretty much everyone is at a loss.
They didn't allow her to run for a couple months because they were afraid of clots breaking free, then she was released to run but running increases the pain, swelling and discoloration so she is back on the no run list.
Any ideas?
I have become Death, the destroyer of electronic gadgets
"When I got too tired to run anymore I just pretended I wasnt tired and kept running anyway" - dd, age 7
an amazing likeness
Well, when I got kicked by the Buick, the bumper hit on the inside of right leg, about mid-shin & calf. The muscle bruising and discoloration lasted over 6 months, and the bone bruise / pain-to-touch last 2+ years. All the medical advice I was got was "time" was the only cure.
Acceptable at a dance, invaluable in a shipwreck.
yeah...thats what I kind of figured. It took about that long for my visible bruise to go away on my back when pulled a banana peel style slip and crash on concrete steps and it still hurts if it is pressed on.
MilkTruck - at what point did you resume running - I know you had a crap ton of other injuries so I am guessing this was not the limiting factor.
OK, just logstalked you. How the hell was that 4 years ago, it seems like just a little bit ago. To me. Probably not to you.
I had a similar injury to my quad from falling on a sharpened stump on a trail. It wasn't painful to run on after a couple weeks, but two years later there's a visible and palpable "divot" where the stump went in.
Last Jan, I split open my knee on a rock in another trail fiasco. Once again, running (super slow) was okay after a month, but I had very limited range of motion, lots of swelling and discoloration from just being vertical more than 90min. at a time. I probably flirted with compensation injuries the whole time, because I definitely had to favour the injured leg. It was about 5 mos. before I could stand to have a pant leg touching that knee, 6mos before the swelling came under control. It will still randomly have a fit and fill up with fluid. All this to say, soft tissue trauma can take a long time to heal, and 4mos. isn't a wildly long timeframe.
I think the more telling signs to look for are where/whether your friend is seeing improvement. I could run slowly almost right away, but could only do a half squat until a month ago. All along, a few little things were improving slowly, and some movements not at all. I think this asynchronous progress is actually typical. I don't think there's any harm in consulting more opinions, MD, PT or otherwise, but I'd wait a bit longer before looking into invasive interventions.
Wannabe Ultrarunner
I was kicked by a horse right in the front of the quad 12 years ago. The direct injury pain lasted for weeks/months, but a pretty significant lump with a big divet above it persisted. For years afterward, whenever I ran hard (speed work, mostly), within a few hours, there would be swelling and pain at the lump that would last until the next day. I always assumed it was from scar tissue/fibrosed muscle fibers breaking down. it hadn't happened in the last couple years, but I ran a track workout on Tuesday, and it happened again, but not nearly as severely as it used to.
MTA: I don't remember how long the purple discoloration lasted, along with pain that felt like being stabbed with a thousand tiny little needles inside my quad-- it wasn't a deep bone pain. But it was a long time before it got better. I got ultrasound therapy for it but don't remember if it helped.
Race schedule: a 50k. Sometime. This year. Maybe a 5k too. Maybe races in between as well.