Originally Posted by l1am

Hi all, I'm looking to get some advice on my symptoms, treatment and possible recovery time (if at all ).

6.5 months ago I dropped an 80lb dumbell directly onto my pinky toe. To be honest I didn't think much of it initially, I figured it was bruised and the swelling would come down - I had some pain, but not much - so I continue my activities of walking etc.

About a month later, the swelling had not gone down. I got some xrays and had a fracture across my mid-phalanx, so I buddy taped it and tried to stay off it. Unfortunately 3 months after the initial injury it was still swelling - I reinjured it by knocking it off something and the next day it was completely black and blue like day 1. I went to a podiatrist, for more x-rays and was just told to give it more time.

Then, about 2 months later I went to see a different podiatrist as the symptoms were persisting, although the swelling had gone down a bit.

He diagnosed me with neuropathy and advised me to contrast bath twice a day (I also had some blood pooling across the foot). I also wore compression socks for a while, and wrapped the toe with Copan tape.

Here are my symptoms:
- I have my ups and downs but it's usually swollen. For a few days last week I thought it was better because I had 2 days in a row where the redness and swelling decreased a lot.

- Walking a lot, hot showers, and just general heat aggravates it a lot. It just goes bright red after a hot shower, and proceeds to swell up with burning and itching. It's as if the sheath is thin or damaged, but I'm not sure.

- Icing helps, and cold weather seems to stop extreme swelling. I also keep it wrapped with Copan tape, which helps a lot. I guess I'm lucky that I can just compress it to keep swelling down but I worry that restricting blood flow might be worse for it.

Anyone have any ideas, suggestions, help? The problem is I guess the swelling could be down to soft tissue trauma from the crushing, but the sign of sensory neuropathy are there for sure.