After nearly 2 months of moaning about how it hurts to walk on my left heel, I finally limped to an orthopedist yesterday. Nearly $300 later, I learned from an x-ray that my heel bone (a.k.a. the calcaneous) looks like a sharp-angled ski-jump instead of a smooth slope – forcing my Achilles tendon and plantar fascia, the ligament that runs along the bottom of the foot, to react rather negatively to the stress of walking.
Isn’t it nice when you can learn something new?
But back to me: Long
ago I gave up wearing anything with a significant heel, and in recent years
have migrated completely to flats. In
the summer I am especially fond of wearing Tom’s brand shoes – flat-as-a
pancake, slipper-like nothings. They are
pretty comfortable until something like this heel pain happens, and then they
are not.
So off I go tomorrow to begin 6 weeks of twice-weekly physical
therapy. And for the next 6 days, I’ll
be taking a lot of steroids to calm my inflamed fascia.
Steroids usually make me pretty crabby and borderline paranoid so it
should be good times around my house in the coming week.
But the truth is that I will likely have this for the rest
of my life because my heel bone is what it is; my feet are flat-as-a-pancake,
too – another chronic condition contributor!
Thank god it’s worse in the morning, and actually gets
better the more walking you do during the day. That said, the late middle-aged onset of this
condition does mean:
1.
I will likely have to give up passion for Tom’s flats
-- at minimum; I won’t be wearing them on the treadmill anymore! And in one unintended consequence, some child in the third world
won’t be getting a free pair of shoes from Tom as I will no longer be a customer. Sigh. (For those of you unfamiliar with this
wonderful brand, Tom’s gives away a pair of shoes for every pair purchased --
which makes one feel better for paying a little too much for shoes that
actually, on the face of it, aren’t really that special but are trendy).
2.
Dr. Scholl’s heel jellies will become an
annoying necessity for cushioning my heel, but they aren’t super comfortable
either as they shift around in your shoe when you walk.
3.
Hello, old grandma cushiony sneakers -- I’ll have
to start wearing you with some frequency. Ugh.
4.
I will have to spend money on physical therapy
when I’d rather spend it on some expensive shoes.
In any event, feet are a highly desirable attribute of most Homo
sapiens so I will do what I am told in an effort to reclaim a tiny bit of
quality of life for my aging body.
Foot, don’t fail me now.
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