Life in My Foot's Hand

Struggling this week with my sore foot. I'm really hating this boot cast but it certainly does take the pressure off my heel. However, it does not make for stylish ensembles when I get dressed in the mornings.

On Wednesday, at the doctor's office, I was told that the thickening caused by inflamation has put pressure on the nerve that runs down my leg and into my heel just behind my ankle bone --which explains the weird sharp pain on the inside of my foot, just behind where the plantar fascia fastens to my heel. The doctor says that 85% of patients with a compromised nerve end up in surgery. I am not happy to learn of this statistic and have opted to try everything else first. I asked about orthotics, maybe having a special arch made, and he said he would be willing to do that, but that he really hated to have me pay $450 for door stops. In other words, he doesn't think they'll help me. Because, as he explained, my problem is not mechanical. It's due to aging, and losing the elasticity in my plantar fascia. Bummer! But what he did agree to try is physical therapy.

So with orders in hand, I walked down to the PT office, and the lady there told me they happened to have an opening that same afternoon. I took it. I had no idea what to expect, and was sort of thinking whatever it entailed it would probably hurt. I was right and wrong.

I arrived on time and a perky little girl took me back to an examining room. She removed my boot and sock off, felt around on my foot, punched with her thumb into tender spots, then probed up my calf and told me that she could tell the muscles in that leg were weakening, beginning to atrophy. Having lost a mother-in-law to ALS, just the word atrophy put fear deep in my heart. But this wasn't the same thing. This, the perky therapist explained, was due to the fact that I have been favoring that leg for months, not using it much, because of the heel pain. Yep. That's right. I was amazed she could tell that just by feeling behind my leg.

She had me lie face-down on an examining table, then she plastered a lot of cold, clammy pads all over the bottom of my foot, set a timer for 15 minutes, turned out the light, and left me alone in the darkened room. Vibrations began to quiver my foot, particularly the heel. After a few minutes, it seemed that ALL the vibrations were aimed into my heel. I had an image of a laser weapon trained on the spur I knew was down inside there somewhere. I hoped it was breaking up, or disintigrating, or whatever this particular machine was supposed to do. A buzzer sounded and the vibrating weapon turned itself off. I laid there listening to the the young therapists outside flirting with one another. It sounded like a trailer for an episode of Grey's Anatomy.

The perky one -- named Vanessa, I found out in a bit -- came back in and was all soothing explanation and cool hands. She smeared a cold gel all over my foot, and began to rub a sonogram wand all around. This was supposed to send an ultrasound echo deep into my foot to desensitize the pain. It's important, according to my perky Vanessa, to interrupt the pain cycle so the area can expend energy healing rather than fighting pain. Hmmmm. Sounded suspiciously like some Eastern yogi speaking. The heating pad on my lower leg felt nice.

After the sonogram treatment, came a massage with Icy Hot. This was my most favorite part of the whole session. In fact, I would have like the entire hour and a half of PT to have been the foot massage. I almost fell asleep. I got chills up my sides several times. Heavenly hands.

Then came mean old Aaron, the single male, the flirter. He keeps all the little girls there in a turmoil with his blue blue eyes. He good-naturedly put me through a battery of foot stretching exercises that undid all the soothing benefit of Vanessa's wonderful foot massage. I would have left hobbling if he had sent me out the door after those exercises, but he had me lay me back down and rubbed a big ice cube all over the bottom of my foot. This worked to numb my foot enough so I could put my boot cast back on and hobble back to my car.

I repeated the whole thing again this morning, and will do the same three times a week for the next four weeks. I hope this actually does keep me off the surgeon's table. I would hate to think all the hard work done by my cheery PT team, and by my poor, shriveling leg and foot, was for naught.

Onward ....