Femoral stress fracture versus hamstring tear

If you remember way, way back in November, I was convinced that I had a hamstring tear. It wasn't until May that I was diagnosed with, instead, a distal femoral stress fracture! Why the confusion?

1. I was confused:
- The pain began as very diffuse pain and even numbness. I couldn't even point to where it hurt. From my hip to my knee was numb, mostly at the back of the leg.
- I had bruising in striations on the back of my thigh. I still can't explain this. It was definitely there. Did I have two injuries at once? Did a hamstring strain lead to a fracture?

This is someone else's hamstring. But my bruising looked almost exactly like this. 

- Graston - a soft-tissue treatment - brought relief. After my first session of Graston I could finally walk down stairs.

2. Medical professionals were confused:
- By the time I saw a chiropractor, pain had localized to a pretty small area on the back of my thigh (and the front if my thigh was unsupported, like dangling off a chair). I asked the chiropractor if he thought it could be a stress fracture, but he immediately wrote it off due to the location. The injury was still new, so I pressured him, and he did the "tuning fork test", which was negative - however, my thighs are muscular and fat, and I seriously doubt that fork got anywhere near my bone (plus the test is just 50% accurate!)
- When I saw a PT, he was already biased by my previous diagnosis. I brought up stress fracture again, because by now I could probe under the muscle and tendon and touch a spot the size of a quarter on the bone that hurt to pressure. But my PT very firmly told me there was "zero chance" of a stress fracture at that location.

3. I did not follow traditional treatment:
- I didn't completely rest.
- For some reason I decided to see a chiropractor first, hoping to discover an imbalance that caused the "hamstring tear". I did rest on my own, but the chiropractor actually urged me to return to running sooner than I had planned. He told me that it was the best way to get blood flow to an injured tendon, which he thought was the cause of the lingering pain.
- My PT also encouraged continued sport, as he does not advocate complete rest for any soft tissue injury.
- I didn't get any imaging done until five months from injury.

So there you have it. A lot of confusion contributing to a misdiagnosis. I learned two things from this injury:
1. See a doctor first. When my doctor walked into the exam room in May, 5 months after injury, he was reading my chief complaint. Before I finished my first sentence he was saying, "Stress fracture. Go get in that x-ray machine." I don't usually like doctor's jumping to conclusions, but he was right. What can I say? Go to the professional with the most experience and the ability to order imaging!
2. REST. Runners love to hear, "Oh, you can run through it" or "You need to use the muscle to get blood flow to the area" etc. But I think I learned my lesson here. Most injuries need rest and rehab and honestly a little rest never, ever hurts you! From now on, I rest my injuries! And then I rebuild.