How did Dr. Rosenbaum fare? She hobbled around on crutches and used a scooter, propping up her leg on a seat. After a while, she broke the fifth metatarsal in her uninjured foot, too, because she was constantly putting her weight on it.

I asked my doctor about the discrepancies in our treatments. There are a variety of metatarsal fractures, he told me.

Most are easy ones, like mine, that don’t require anything except patience. A few rare ones, like the type Dr. Rosenbaum had, need what he called “more cautious care.”

And hers, she said in an email, needed that care. “Mine was a real Jones,” she wrote. It took three months, but now it is healed.

Thing is, some doctors treat all of these fractures conservatively.

“One of the most common second opinions I get in New York City is the fifth metatarsal fracture,” Dr. Greisberg said. “Patients sometimes can’t believe that many of these will heal no matter what they do.”

The key is to properly diagnose the fracture, said Dr. Bruce J. Sangeorzan, an orthopedist at the University of Washington in Seattle and past president of the American Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society.

For the unfortunate people who have the rare, difficult to heal fracture, treatment means eight weeks of putting no weight on the foot. Even with that, they may not get better without surgery because the break is in an area that does not get much blood.