"Stay fit over 50" was nicely alliterative. Maybe I should have called this one "Stay supple over 60", and move on to "Stay svelte over 70", "Stay agile over 80", "Stay nimble over 90"? Or maybe I'm just being silly.
But more to the point, staying fit, supple, svelte, or even moderately mobile is definitely not easy with a broken metatarsal. This got me rambling through the internet to find something that provided a bit of insight, and brought me to this:
http://www.betterbones.com/bonefracture/speedhealing.pdf
I'm not sure how rigorously peer-reviewed, sensible or thoroughly researched it is, but it's quite interesting. One of the many suggestions is to make sure you get enough protein. Since I suspect very few people have a clue how much protein is enough, I've interpreted this to mean get a bit more protein then you might otherwise. It also suggests exercise as a way of promoting bone healing. I'm wary about this and don't intend to do anything that hurts, or might hurt, or might even remotely possibly hurt. On the other hand, moving around a bit, stretching, and exercising parts of me that are far away from the broken metatarsal does make me feel a bit more like a human being and less like a slug.
Pain relief is another matter. For most purposes (headaches, etc.) I think ibuprofen works fine; for broken bone pain there's a debate. This is worth a read if you don't mind quite a lot of quite technical stuff:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3259713/
My interpretation of this fairly long article is that the evidence for and against anti-inflammatories for the treatment of broken bone pain is fairly shaky but it's possible that they interfere with the healing process and are probably worth avoiding if there's a sensible alternative.
And for those of you who haven't broken anything, I'll try not to bang on about it so much next time.
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