To Run or Not to Run...

I am faced with a dilemma. I went to the podiatrist to figure out what's going on with my right foot. I had a feeling all along about it, and unfortunately I was correct. I have a stress fracture in mt foot. Crap!! Looking back at my blog, I was complaining about the same issue before Thanksgiving. I am guessing it started then, but I rested a bit and it must have healed, and happened again a couple of weeks ago. He said it has started healing (apparently they don't show up on an xray until that starts to happen). He was surprised that I have continued to run through it, but as I explained to him, I have a goal in mind, and when I am determined, I don't let a lot of things stand in my way. I also have what I consider to be a high threshold for pain. So anyway, he basically told me that I can keep running, but that I need to reduce my mileage and wear a more heavily padded sneaker. I also shouldn't wear heels while it is healing, which isn't a huge issue for me. I also have a nice painkiller/anti-inflammatory to take. I can do all of those things- I even have a decent pair of Brooks Glycerines that I was fitted for about a year or so ago, which haven't been used much. But everything I read on the Internet tells me not to run at all, that I can do more damage and end up with a break. The last thing I want is to make things worse. I can deal with missing a couple of weeks of running- I can easily hop on the bike or the elliptical, maybe take a swim in the pool. But more than that and I can forget about the half marathon in May. After I saw him I had myself pretty well convinced that I could drop it down to two runs a week instead of four. Now I am not sure that I should run at all. I go back in 3 weeks to see how things are, and if it isn't better, I may end up having to wear a removable boot, which at that point I imagine running will be out of the question. So it seems logical to me to rest for the next week (or 2 or even 3), get in some cross-training and hope that it heals quickly. That would still give me 11 weeks to train. Plus some programs I have looked at max out the long run at 10 miles. I've already hit 6.5 and I would hope that I could still do that even if I took some time off, as long as I keep up the other cardio workouts.