The Agony of My Feet
My feet are killing me. And at this point, I’m pretty sure I’m being literal. To understand how this pain began, we must go back to the sepia-colored hardship that was my youth. Ever since I can remember, I’ve pretty much walked barefoot. Yes, despite growing up – for the most part – in Bryan / College Station, Texas my divorced parents could afford shoes. I just chose not to wear them that often. This led to all types of ignored injuries. Feet full of sticker-burrs? Who cares, I’ll just mash them into my skin. Blisters? I’ll pop them and walk around with pus-stained feet. Stepped on broken glass? It’ll come out eventually.
This training in abuse helped greatly when I became a lifeguard for the City of Bryan. I had absolutely no problem walking on the concrete deck that surrounded the pool which sat scorching under the summer sun. One of the lifeguards I worked with (a physics student at Texas A & M) would measure the ground temp of the concrete each afternoon (for his own kicks, again he was a physics student at Texas A & M) and routinely report that that it was 130 degrees. I had no issue walking barefooted on this. I chalked my ability to do such to having well calloused soles. Despite this hard shell, athlete’s foot would routinely penetrate, and I would end up rubbing my feet on the blistering cement in an effort to scratch away the itch. That didn’t work and more often than not I would have to have my feet scraped clean by a nurse. Man, that felt good.
I first had to have my toenails removed while in college. Not all of them. Just those on my two big toes. This first happened after a hunting trip for javelina in the mountains of far West Texas. Blood blisters formed under my nails, and they eventually burst upward, spliting the nail. My doctor informed me that they’d have to be removed and began the procedure by promising, “this is gonna hurt!” And it did. A lot. She slammed home a needle deep under my nail and past the root to deliver anthesis of some sort then went to town on my nails with a pair of pliers. I left the office shaking and sheened in sweat. I had to have that procedure committed twice more in my life and each time the results were the same.
I don’t remember when I first broke a toe but do remember that I did so by dropping a weight on it while barefoot. The 20-pound dumbbell landed right smack in the middle of the big toe on my right foot. It pretty much destroyed all the goods inside and resulted in my gimping around in a protective boot for a few weeks. I broke that same toe twice more, the other big toe once, and my pinky toes twice each.
It was my heel that started giving me real trouble about a year ago. The pain in my right heel got so bad that I finally listened to my wife and went to an upper end athletic shoe store to have my feet scanned and measured. The good folks at Fleet Feet in San Antonio put my feet through a battery of tests only to declare that they’re pretty much screwed. My feet are different sizes. The arches are vastly different as are the ball width and girth and my heel width. I asked what if anything would help my situation and almost $300 later, I had some upper end insoles and a new pair of Hoka shoes. Have these helped? Some, I suppose. But I still have heel pain to the point where when I get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom or sneak a few gulps of Diet Dr Pepper I hobble on the ball of my foot rather than walk normally. I’ve also developed several blisters as a result of my feet resting higher in my shoes.
I think my next step (No pun intended. Mainly because I hate puns and I’m not that clever.) is to visit a podiatrist. Maybe a medical professional is what I need to offset bad genetics and decades of abuse. If that doesn’t work, I’m thinking voodoo. Maybe I should start with that.
This piece first appeared in the Fredericksburg Standard.
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