Fitness and Injuries: a balance

I have been regularly maintaining my fitness and joined Kung-fu classes in October 2016 as I was on a high. At the same time, I have been going to swimming classes, running and gym. I continued running even though my left calf muscles were little sore. At the end of February 2016, I participated in the 10,000 m run in the IISc football ground as part of Spectrum 2016, a sports fest in IISc. I felt strain in my left calf muscle during the run, but continued  and ending up injuring more. I was walking with slight limp for next few days and running was painful. I did some massage and heat treatment which provided some relief of the sore calf muscle. So, I stopped kung-fu classes and spent more time in gym lifting heavy weights. After I came back to room in the night after gym, I felt pain in the lateral thumb side while bending the wrist. One week later, I consulted the Health center doctor for the wrist pain, and they diagnosed it as De Quervain syndrome, and gave some anti-inflammatory tablets (NSAIDS) and suggested physiotherapy.  NSAIDS gave some temporary relief and the physiotherapist gave heat and ultraviolet treatment. As the relief was temporary, one of my friend,  who was a very fit runner and cyclist, suggested me to take treatment from a good physiotherapist. He gave me the contact of Dr. Muthu Kumar who was the physio for BCCI, whose clinic name  is Stride spine and sports rehab clinic, opposite to Jain Hospital near Bangalore Cantonment. I went to his clinic which has a small well maintained gym. The physio was very busy, so he examined my calf muscle and instructed his assistant to do some massage and teach few stretching and strengthening exercise for calf muscles. He said its a calf strain and will recover in few days if I do those exercises regularly twice a day for calf muscle strengthening, and that I can start running in few weeks. He told to do icing for my wrist pain and suggested some dumbbell exercises. I recovered from my calf muscle strain within few days and continued doing the exercises. I tried using cold treatment with ice and heat for wrist, and observed heat was give temporary relief, and ice was not so effective. I should have continued ice treatment but discontinued due to scarce availability of ice. So, my calf strain almost healed but my wrist was still hurting and I continued physiotherapy in IISc. I also consulted an orthopedic doctor outside who gave the same diagnosis as de Quervain (misdiagnosis) and told to use wrist thumb splint, which was of not much use. I re-consulted Dr. Muthu one month later and he suggested wrist exercises with dumbbells and alternate one minute hot and ice treatment for a total of 20 minutes twice a day. The wrist muscles were weakened due to sprain and inactivity and he told I need to strengthen the wrist to recover fully. I followed his advice and regularly did the strengthening and ice/ heat treatment and my wrist was getting better. I also heard that sprains take more time to heal, and we need to continuously keep doing strengthening exercises and follow the advise given by physio.

Now, I have completely recovered from the wrist sprain by taking adequate steps and also play badminton which completely uses my right wrist. And now, I do proper warmup and stretching before doing any workout which is very much essential to avoid any injury. Also, we need to do the workouts with proper form, steadily and avoid any jerky movement. Also, we need to identify our weak areas in our body and do corresponding strengthening workouts for the same. And we need to visit and follow a good sports physio in case of injuries during workout and avoid going to other physicians for proper diagnosis of sports injuries. Also, if we feel a discomfort while doing some activity, we need to rest and avoid the activity till we completely recover. Now, I maintain a good balance of my workouts and take adequate rest whenever there is a sign of injury.