Banta Ronald DPM – Ronald L Banta DPM & Associates

2 weeks before a half marathon, on the last long run of training, my luck finally ran out. I got about 2 miles in and had to turn around and walk back because of the sharp pain in my ankle every time I took a step. I thought maybe it was just something that got pulled or I didn’t take enough time in between runs, or whatever I could think of to convince myself it wasn’t that bad. Unfortunately, a week later the pain was still pretty noticeable and the dreaded thought of a stress fracture creeped into my mind. I wanted to be sure to get it looked at to make sure that wasn’t the case so that I didn’t make things much worse by continuing to run on it.
In my pursuit of finding a podiatrist, I decided to skip Unilocal (not that I don’t trust you guys) and instead got a list of doctors in the area from the Anthem insurance website. After searching for podiatrists that specialized in sports medicine in Indy and sorting by quality rating, this practice came up on top of the list. I called on a Wednesday afternoon, and was able to set up an appointment at 7:30 AM on a Friday. It’s great that on Mondays and Fridays they offer 7:30 appointments so I can get in early and still get to work at a decent time. The building wasn’t too difficult find, but does require a little bit of navigating of the business park that it is in and careful observation of the building numbers to find the right one. The waiting area is clean with plenty of reading material, and the staff that greeted me at the front window was very nice. After a little paperwork that they asked I show up a little early to complete, I was taken back and the examination of my foot could begin.
I was first asked some basic questions by one of their assistants or technicians (I’m sure I’m using the wrong word here, but I don’t know enough about the medical field to know their title). Dr. Stumpf came in not too long later and spent a lot of time asking questions and thoroughly examining my ankle. The recommendation was to get some X-​rays done to confirm there wasn’t a fracture, and to my delight, they were able to do them right in their office and have them developed about 5 minutes later. I was worried I was going to have to go to an imaging center and then have them send the results back and schedule another appointment to go over them, but that wasn’t the case and the whole process took about 10 minutes. Fortunately mine turned out negative for a fracture, and I was able to get a lot of detail about what was causing my pain, and quite a few options to try to fix it, depending on how aggressive I wanted to be with it. After settling on the one I was most comfortable with and getting a prescription and some free samples, I was out the door and confident I would be able to run the half (albeit in some pain) without doing some damage to my ankle that is going to be long term or serious.
I really felt like they understood running and other particular sports and took that into consideration instead of just looking at it as a general case of ankle pain. He understood the kind of joint, muscle, and ligament stresses that runners endure and what training programs runners go through, and wanted to be sure he prescribed his treatment with that in mind. Hopefully I won’t need to be back, but I was assured if another week goes by and nothing was helping and I needed to get in again, they would be able to accommodate me with my race quickly approaching. If you’ve got any kind of foot or ankle pain, especially from sports, I would recommend giving them a call.