First, sorry I’ve been MIA for the last 3 weeks. Truthfully, I’ve been unmotivated to post lately. But I thought I’d share my recent experience with the new foot doctor I saw last week and also just ramble a little about what’s been on my mind today.

I was walking Duncan earlier and my mind was all over the place. I was trying to solve a million things and feeling frustrated that I was getting nowhere with every single thing. I was so annoyed and found myself being hard on myself for not coming up with solutions. And then it dawned on me that I can really be my own worst enemy.

My process is my process. I don’t always think linear and I sometimes take a while to process things before I can work it out. I don’t know why I struggle accepting it and just let it be. 

I know I’m a worrier, over thinker and over feeler…but I find myself constantly criticizing myself and being so hard on myself for being those things. Really! If I just accept that that’s my process I bet I could save myself a lot of angst. 

I think it’d be so cool if I could just “own it”. You know? Like  “Yeah, I’m going to get a bit whiny and emotional about this and hem and haw a bit but don’t worry….it’s just my process….and i’ll come through in the end.”

So that’s that.

Anyhoo. I’ll update you a bit about my #toewoes

My last run was over 2 months ago at the Big Chill 5k. I wanted to see if rest would help. Well actually I’m sort of lying. I ran for 3 whole minutes last week.

I was walking around the neighborhood just enjoying a warmish day and the break in my workload and just felt this urge to run. But after 3 minutes I chickened out for fear that my foot would really hurt. The original toe injury really barely bothers me these days…..but it’s the toe on my other foot that has now become the main pain and driving me insane! #intentionalrhyming 🙂 My feet have actually started to slightly improve over the last 2 months but I decided to find a new foot doctor to go to anyway.

Last Thursday I had my first appointment with the new doc and wow….he spent 45 minutes with me! He did a thorough exam and was able to determine a few things that might be causing me the toe/forefoot pain. I have high arches to start. I also have this thing called Equinus, which is a fancy word for tight calves and limited ankle dorsiflextion. This can cause extra pressure to the ball of the foot. Probably caused by a decade of running without stretching very much. I have neuromas on both feet which could be contributing to the pain as well. And lastly after doing x-rays he noticed that my metatarsal heads aren’t aligned well. Apparently they should sort of fan out and I have a few that are the same length and parallel which also puts too much pressure on my toe joints. The doc didn’t say this but i’m probably about 10 pounds heavier these days thanks to such a huge decrease in calorie burn and huge increase in making poor food choices and I know that means my feet have to support that extra weight which can’t be helpful. 🙁

He taped my feet up to support my arches and added metatarsal pads too to see if wearing that for a week would help.

Unfortunately after 4 days I couldn’t take it anymore and removed all the tape and pads. It wasn’t working. It actually made my feet feel worse. He also told me to start stretching my calves religiously 3 times a day, every single day. I’ve been doing that and I think it’s actually helped me some. I know it could take up to 12 weeks of this to really lengthen the calf muscles so probably too soon to tell. But wow! Go Google Equinus and read about all the things tight calves can exacerbate….it’s wild!

We talked about next steps and I have a follow-up appointment this Thursday. We might try orthotics to go along with the calf stretching and just see if that helps. He mentioned alcohol sclerosing injections or cortisone shots for the neuromas but I’m not ready for that as I don’t think the neuromas are my source of pain. It feels more like joint pain rather than nerve pain. Lastly he wants me to get some bloodwork to detect for possible arthritis.

It has been so long that I’ve woken up to yet another day of foot pain. Do you know the discomfort when you’re shoes are a few sizes too tight or your socks are so thick your feet hurt in the shoe or they’re too narrow? Yeah, that’s the discomfort I’ve felt in some capacity pretty much daily for 10 months.

Emotionally this has been quite a challenge. I spent the Spring and Summer doing yoga, swimming and riding my bike—trying to convince myself I was staying physically fit and emotionally fit too. But yoga started to irritate my feet (those downward dogs and planks!) and then the winter arrived and I stopped swimming and biking. I’m not getting any high-impact cardio at this point. I have managed to at least 2 night hikes a month though.

I’m missing my double digit long runs. Just yesterday I pulled up my iTunes playlists and there at the top was one titled “10 mile music”. I started to cry. I told you I’m an over feeler!

In the meantime I’ve been finding other outlets that aren’t exercise related. There’s been red wine and coloring book therapy.

And I set up a SnapChat account just so I can play around with the filters. Apparently fake eyelashes and a bow do wonders for me 🙂

Oh and carbs…lots of carbs.

Mr. SOTSS and I tried to politely share a tub of popcorn at the movies but we kept bumping in to each other. Now that I think about it maybe he was trying to deter me by grabbing my hand. LOL!

I’m about to have some major life changes happening over the next few months. I’ll save it for the next post. But Duncan will have to get used to being separated from me a little more. Or maybe I should say I will have to get used to being separated from Duncan a little more.

Sigh! It’s all good though. All exciting stuff!

How are you?

Tell me some highlights of your last 3 weeks.