For at least seven years, I’ve had a chronic leg pain that would only ever occur in one leg at a time (but not always the same leg), and only after a night in which I’d stayed up too late and not slept enough. It was fairly rare, never lasted more than a day, and didn’t feel like a sharp pain, so I mostly ignored it. My basic theory on it was that I had suffered some kind of stress fracture in the past; it only hurt, after all, when I was too tired for my muscles to support me properly (keep in mind here that my grasp of anatomy is fairly medieval).
I stayed up forever late the other night, playing Wario Ware Inc and Illuminati with the Tuesday Night Ballers, and yesterday I had my first recurrence of the problem since moving in with Maria in August. It was also worse than usual, probably because I’d sprinted for (and missed) the bus in the afternoon. I planned on ignoring it and treating it with sleep, as usual.
Maria, not a person who is lightly put off a train of thought, decided to treat me with forced couch rest, Advil and an insulated hot towel around my ankle–even though the pain extends through my entire calf. I humored her, and then to my surprise, her doctoring completely worked inside an hour. The pain was completely gone. It was pretty magical; I’ve never had my leg feel better so fast before. Maria is my hero!
Anyway, she says this means the problem is mostly (if not all) mild tendonitis. Interesting. I always wondered when I’d get my first chronic stress injury, but then I also figured it’d be carpal tunnel.