Shin stress reaction
This is going to be a very long post so I apologize in advance, but I would appreciate any advice!
So I am a cross country and track runner who just graduated high school, and I'm going to be running in college. I've been running since sixth grade and I've been taking it seriously for quite a while. However, I never had any major injury problems until my junior year which I'm pretty sure is in response to my underfueling that started after junior cross-country season. During junior track season, I had Achilles tendinitis that went on for way too long, and during my senior cross-country season, I struggled with passing out after races because of my low iron. After this past cross-country season, I started gaining lots of weight, and I don't know entirely why, but I definitely can tell that I needed to gain some weight to get my period back because it had been missing for a year, but I definitely feel like I've gained way too much and I can't lose any of it or stop gaining no matter how hard I try 😭 so the start of this track season was already rough with the extra weight, and then I developed what I believe could have been a stress fracture in late March, so I stopped running, but it never got better. I finally got an MRI about two weeks ago, and it showed a stress reaction, but I'm sure that it was originally a stress fracture during track because it hurt a lot worse and it was unbearable to walk at the start. I was told to be in a boot, but the boot is causing my Achilles to hurt again, and it's also causing my shin to randomly have sharp pain that I hadn't felt in a long time, because it usually didn't hurt to walk besides the first couple weeks of the injury, only when I try out biking or elliptical again that's when it starts hurting again, but now the boot hurts it no matter what. So now I don't know if I should wear my boot or not, and I also just don't understand why it's been three months and my shin hasn't healed yet. I really need to start training for college cross country, and I'm feeling quite hopeless.