I guess I spoke too soon ...

... my doctor called this morning about my bone scan. Good news is that I don't have a stress fracture, bad news is that there was increased uptake on the bone scan consistent with stress periostitis in my tibia (= inflammation of the bone lining, an overuse-type injury, often referred to as "medial tibial stress syndrome" (MTSS)). I had thought that perhaps it was MTSS, but didn't realize that this actually causes inflammation of the bone and shows up on a bone scan :-( . The treatment is rest, ice, anti-inflammatories ... I've already been "resting" (in terms of no running) for almost 3 weeks since my last triathlon, I didn't ask my doctor how long I should be resting for and whether it was ok to do my next triathlon on the 25th as I didn't really want to hear her answer. (She continues to use the term "shin splints", which sports medicine specialists are trying to avoid because it is too non-specific and actually refers to a number of conditions - but then, apparently the radiologist also used the term "shin splints" in their report as well ... sounds like I'm not dealing with any sports medicine experts here, not that I'm one myself lol).

So, I figure I'll rest until next week, try an easy short run (or two) then do the 5 km at the triathlon (walking lots or entirely if I need to) ... then no more running until it's completely better afterwards. I might even request a sports medicine referral if it doesn't seem to be settling properly ... with what I'm reading, apparently over-pronation is potentially part of the cause and orthotics can help, so perhaps my current orthotics aren't quite right, and the podiatrist I got them from is usually so quick with visits that I'm not sure he'd actually do a thorough analysis of my gait and whether there's too much pronation or similar.

(and "overuse" in my case would be too much too quickly, in terms of increasing distance, not that I'm doing too much running in general because that certainly wasn't happening with me ...)

A side benefit though is that I will be able to claim at least 1 or 2 continuing medical education credits for all the reading I'm currently doing about tibial periostitis/MTSS/stress fractures :-) .

Some articles:
-simple version from about.com
-an article from a podiatry perspective