Foot going blue, what's going on?

[user0512]

Hi,

So I fell over at work a week ago, had swelling went to A&E and the doctor and radiographer had differing opinions. Doctor thought it was a sprain, radiographer thought there was a small fracture.

The swelling has gone down. But my foot is starting to go a bit blue for the last three ish days.

Why?

The swelling was in a different area to the blue area.

Pics attached!

1st pic: When it happened - swollen on the side.

2nd pic: Swelling has gone down quite a lot, but the foot is going blue?

The foot still hurts quite a lot

Thanks!

I can’t really see the pics but is it not just bruising?

Here's another picture. *

Sorry posted on AIBU for more traffic!*

But the part of my foot that I hurt was on the side so why would the swelling be at the top?

If it can't come out at the place that was injured, it comes out beside it. The body's just trying to heal itself.

You'll often see no bruise at the point of impact- maybe a red mark- and multi colours of rings around it as the bruising comes out over time.

I think bruising too, the whole are is affected, not just the point of impact .

It will probably start to turn yellow soon

Looks like bruising to me.

When I ruptured my calf muscle the A&E doctor warned me that my foot would go bluey /black over the following week, due to gravity taking blood to lowest point. He was right, my foot was spectacular, i think more friends visited me to see the legendry foot that see how I was 🤣🤣🤣

I badly sprained my ankle last May - still not healed. Anyhow, the bruising kept coming out for over a week after it happened, in really random places all over my leg and foot. My husband and I used to marvel at it daily (sad little lives!)

Do you know what a bruise is? It’s a collection of blood under the skin. It is blue now but will change colours. It isn’t always where the injury was if it’s moved around a lot like a foot. I had abdo surgery last year I was black and blue in all kinds of weird places. Hope it’s better soon

That just looks like normal bruising to me?

It's just bruising - which is where blood vessels are damaged beneath the skin, causing them to leak. The leaked blood can pool in areas next to the tissue that was injured, so the bruise might not match up to the bit that was hurt.

As everyone else has said, it's just bruising. Except it to get worse before it gets better.

@user0512 the top of my foot bruised like that when I broke my second to little toe, I also had a fracture below it, metatarsal maybe, it tools weeks for the pain to subside

Soaking the foot in hot water (not hot enough to scald) will help to bring the bruising out. The heat dilates the blood vessels, bringing macrophages along to gobble up the damaged and extruded blood cells.
As PPs have said, it will gradually turn green and yellow, as the macrophages release partly digested haemoglobin pigments.

Looks like bruising to me.

Often ED doctors/emergency nurse practitioners interpret X-rays on the fly and depending how often they work on minor injuries, etc may miss something. Usually all X-rays are later reviewed by a consultant radiologist who will write a formal report which goes onto your electronic record a few days or a week or so afterwards (depends on backlog). It does sometimes happen where a very tiny or uncommon kind of fracture has been missed by the rushed/stressed/less radiologically skilled ED clinician.

If you have worsening pain/swelling/new symptoms you could always go back, your X-ray may have been reported on by now which should confirm for sure whether there was a fracture. Usually radiographers are pretty good at recognising an abnormal finding on whichever imaging modality they’re used to working in, but personally it would be the consultant radiologists report that I’d have most confidence in, out of all three of them.

Bruising, if you have torn or sprained ligaments and muscle it can appear on other areas of your foot.

Bruising.

I fell down some steps and tore a ligament in my foot. Very painful, swollen and some lovely bruising down one side.

It can work the other way too, btw. I once ran up a flight of stairs whilst drunk, had a pint in both hands, tripped towards the top, didn’t have free hands to save myself so face planted a set of doors at the top of the stairs, unfortunately the one I hit my cheek on was bolted shut so I had a very swollen and tender cheek and quite a shock.

I didn’t think I’d fractured it, I’m a nurse so felt competent to manage it myself, but after a week when swelling had started to settle I had a very specific point of bony tenderness and sort of a dint through the fat pad over my zygoma. I realised then that I probably ought to get it checked out, went to ED (where I work), got sent to X-ray, the radiographer thought there was a fracture, as did the ED doctor working on minors when he reviewed the xray, so he rang Maxillofacial to refer me and the maxfax doctor looked at the image and said he couldn’t see one but wasn’t certain, made me an appt anyway due to the bony tenderness and said we’d wait for the radiologist report to come through for the appt. Went to the maxfax appt and it turned out maxfax were correct, there was no fracture, it was all probably just swelling and soft tissue damage.

It isn’t always totally clear cut or obvious, one way or another. Sometimes people have a plaster put on and are referred to fracture clinic, only to have the Orthos review the X-ray in clinic and find that there was no fracture in the first place.

I dropped something on the top of my foot and the bruising spread sideways, nowhere near the injury. As others have said it's to do with the blood draining where it can