Doctor's Orders

Thirteen days out, and it feels right to introduce the person who actually rebuilds the foot. Meet Dr. Ben Stein, the orthopedic surgeon who has now agreed to do this to me twice. The man up top is the reason I’m running at all.

Here’s how we met. Back in 2022, I’d finally wrecked the posterior tibial tendon in my left foot, the slow way: years of running stacked on top of a couple of earlier ortho surgeries that didn’t go great. I saw two other surgeons about fixing it. Both of them looked at the wreckage and passed. The full menu, a double osteotomy with an FDL tendon transfer and a spring ligament repair, was more than they wanted to take on.

Dr. Stein was the only one who said yes. But it came with a catch: it would be done on his terms. That was not a figure of speech. I literally signed an agreement that my post-op would follow his regimen, exactly, no improvising.

It was tough. It was long. There were stretches that were genuinely agonizing. And it was worth every single bit of the adherence. At the nine-month mark I was walking with no issues and feeling fantastic. Feeling, if I’m honest, too fantastic, because that’s when I broke my fifth metatarsal trying to ease back into running. To be fair, I don’t think he was thrilled. But what can I say. I’m a runner. We do this to ourselves.

So in May of 2023 he repaired the fifth met, which wasn’t healing on its own thanks to a few other complicating conditions. Same surgeon, same strict approach, same agreement. The difference: this time I actually respected the timeline instead of treating it as a suggestion.

And then the foot did something I didn’t expect. It got better than it had ever been. Two years out from both surgeries, I broke 2 hours in the half-marathon, the first time in 15+ years, AND I got back to 100-milers and broke a PR at that distance that had stood for fifteen years. Twice. For most of my running life, longer distances meant my foot and ankle would start screaming somewhere out on the course. Now that left foot is happy and has stayed that way. It’s like I’m running on a whole new foot, and I suppose I am. I’d like to say the same now about the right one.

For context, I was back to ultras last year. So the full arc was really only about a year of working through a situation that was genuinely complicated and involved a lot more than the foot and ankle. A year of patience bought me a new decade of running. That’s the trade.

If you ever find yourself searching for a foot and ankle surgeon in DC, here’s the short version of what I tell people about Dr. Stein:

• You will get the best surgeon you can find for this, full stop.
• You will not get warm fuzzies. You don’t want warm fuzzies. You want someone who knows their stuff cold and will hold you to a full recovery: crutches, the heavy boot, solid months of PT. That is how it should be done.
• If you’re a runner, you will get back to it. When I asked whether he’d worked on anyone like me, he admitted I was his first ultra-runner. We’re a stubborn breed and we hate waiting, but oh, is it worth it. A year of recovery after work this intense isn’t surprising. It served me beautifully.

Which brings me to the whole point of writing this down today. This time there’s extra hardware going in, on top of the five-job rebuild I already mapped out. More work means the protocol matters more, not less. So I’m making the commitment in public, where I can’t quietly walk it back: I follow it to the T. From day one. No testing the fences at month nine, no “I feel great so surely a little jog won’t hurt.” I’ve already paid that tuition once, with a snapped fifth metatarsal.

I’ll share the actual protocol as I move through it, the real specifics, phase by phase. But before any of that, the lesson sits on its own: follow the protocol. It is the entire game.