I Dropped My Marbles

I haven’t bitched about my feet in a long time, so I’m due.  Some of you know, because of my incessant whining, complaining, and sniveling, that I’ve got a raging case of plantar fascitis.  Raging in my own mind, anyway.  In the grand scheme of things and medical problems, it’s not that big a deal.  Usually the PF can be controlled by orthodics, but the orthodics caused another problem – swollen joints on the outside of my feet, otherwise known as bursitis – that were equally as painful as the PF.

My goal has been to try to get rid of the orthodics because I want to let the bursitis calm down, and I want to wear shoes that aren’t fugly for once.  I’m a girl and I really hate being limited to shoes in which I can fit my orthodics.

I’ve been to several different podiatrists and I’ve heard every crackpot remedy out there, but it wasn’t until a friend went to a different podiatrist that I found what might be my answer.  Physical therapy.  He had awesome results with it and gave me the name of the guy with the goods.

I asked my podiatrist for a referral and he was shocked and amazed that a PT would have a program for PF.  What?  How can a doctor who specializes in feet not know that there is a PT in town that has a program for like 30% of his patients?  Anyway, he gave me the referral and I started physical therapy.   Three times a week I see this guy and he makes me do things like stretching, and balancing, and riding a bike.

One of the things he has me doing is picking up marbles.  With my toes.  Hundreds of them.  It’s SO hard!  I am the world’s least flexible human and my feet are no exception.  So they take this jar of marbles and they dump it out on the floor.  And you don’t get to stop until you’ve picked up every single one.  You can pick them up two at a time, or three or four, if you want.  Legend tells of a girl who can pick up seven marbles at once, but I think that’s a fish story because the most I’ve achieved is two.

I haven’t worn my orthodics in a week because my PT has been taping my feet.  When he first brought out the tape I wanted to cry and say “not again!”  But he does it differently and it doesn’t hurt…much.

I think it’s really helping.

The parts of my feet that were aggravated by my orthodics are calming down and so far I haven’t had too much pain from the PF.  I almost don’t want to say it out loud because I’m afeared of the gooch, but I think there’s a glimmer of hope.  My PT said that if I keep up with the exercises I can probably run again, provided I take it very slowly.  I’ll never be a distance runner, but maybe, just maybe, I’ll get my groove back.

And I’ll get to wear cute shoes.