The truth is out there (part deux)

Tony Standering took one look at the toe and suggested it was probably osteoarthritis (awesome) that was causing the lack of mobility. The joint was completely immobile, so even when I tried to move it manually there was absolutely no movement in the toe, the joint was completely rigid. Unlike the smart arse at the Sheffield podiatry unit, Tony didn't judge me for having the cryo, and after unsuccessfully trying to get the click of Mulder's Sign, he was also of the opinion that the Morton's Neuroma was gone (so no need for the surgery that the afore mentioned smart arse was saying I needed then?)

Tony suggested I get new orthotics fitted in time for my trip to Nepal, he explained that the foot needed to be stabilised as I over pronate, this in turn loosens up all the joints and leaves me liable to suffer from injury. Orthotics would put my foot into a neutral position thereby making me less likely to further injure the foot, call me radical but when you're going to be walking a number of hours every day for three weeks you really don't want to injure your feet.

So I got the new orthotics and started to 'wear them in' over a two week period. You have to build up usage gradually, so 15 minutes on the first day, building up to a few hours over the first week, then on to a full day and only at that point can you even consider going for a long walk in them.

At first they felt so weird like I was on stilts but now when I'm wearing them I sometimes have to check if they're actually in the shoe. My bones still feel like they're grinding against each other if I do certain exercises but on the whole the pain isn't too bad.

I did walk for 3 weeks and my foot did hold up, I didn't lose the toe to gangrene through the cold but we did end up hiring a helicopter to take us out of Lukla as the planes stopped flying due to fog and snow. But that's another story, check out the two minute video of our adventures.

The truth is out there.

I know, I know, it’s been a while huh? I have been writing for another blog which you can find here but I decided it was time to pick up on my own page, given that I’ve been working up towards another challenge. 

Since my last post I’ve been back through the system regarding ‘the toe’, the neuroma and the foot in general. After being told categorically that there must be a neuroma still in my foot, even though it doesn’t show up on a scan and not one single doctor can elicit ‘Mulders Sign’ (even whilst pressing so hard on my foot that it stops blood from flowing) I decided to give up on the system, stop trying to find answers and just live with the stumpy toe and pain that the foot caused.

Ignorance was quite blissful until I started to train for a trekking holiday in Nepal. After realising that another marathon was probably out of the question I sought a new challenge and signed up for a holiday, trekking to Everest Base Camp and other sights in the Khumbu region.  As I built up the hours of walking in preparation for the trip the pain in the sole of my foot became worrying. After a training day, which saw me ascend and descend Snowdon (walking up there, not taking a ride on the ‘lazy train’) I decided to seek help again and went back to the first podiatrist I’d ever seen many years ago prior to the neuroma, Tony Standering. 

Foot Yoga for disenfranchised toes

It’s been a funny old year so far, and I have a funny old foot to match it for oddness. As I may have mentioned in the past I have a morton’s neuroma….actually that should be I ‘had’ a morton’s neuroma.

Recently I revisited the very lovely Barn Clinic to see my old chum Robin Weaver, a man who has probed me on two separate occasions. Fnaaaar. Yes it was the fabulous Robin Weaver who froze the offending over the past two years, the most recent frosting being at the end August 2011.

Since then I’ve still had aches and pains in the foot, though considerably less than when I did have the neuroma. I continue to steer clear of those beautiful shoes for which I was famed, well most of the time I steer clear. I may have slipped on the patent Kurt Geigers on a couple of occasions. They are so lovely, even though they’re like a corset one size too small for my feet. But on the whole I’ve been good so when I tried to put a pair of shoes on during May and realised I had a completely paralysed toe unable to join in the ceremonial pointing in anticipation of slipping into a shoe I was a somewhat aghast. In fact if truth be known I nearly gipped, as I looked down and saw my toe flipping me the bird as all the other toes neatly curled into a foot fist. It looked like it had been dislocated pain free and I just hadn’t noticed.

I tried not to panic as I realised said toe was completely immobile and numb to the touch. Robin had warned me there might be some numbness following the second procedure, but when he'd said numbness I didn’t think he meant Guillain Barre syndrome in one toe. So I held my nerve, no pun intended and called him on the Monday. The conversation went along these lines,

‘So you know when you said there may be some numbness Robin, is complete paralysis something I can expect too?'

‘Hmmmmmmm………no that’s not something I’ve seen before, that's not usual’

‘Oh crap, that’s not really what I wanted to hear’

So here I am a couple of months later after having the pesky foot scanned to be told the neuroma has completely gone (plus point) there may be some bursitis in the joint (negative point and probably what’s behind the occasional, painful twinge) and that there may be some muscle wastage around the site of the neuroma. In other words the lump of the neuroma has stretched the muscles in my foot and left them unable to move the toe, I have a black hole in my foot. I have to be frank, I’m not completely buying it. But I’ll go with the programme. And when I say programme I mean it. I have a number of mobilising exercises I have to do.

Yes, yoga for toes. Get that on yer Madonna. Though we've seen her camel toe workout on many an occasion, I bet she doesn’t have a teeny toe work out. I can see my future mapped out, fitness DVDs where I go from having a fairly obese toe to having a svelte, toned toe. Perhaps my toe’s fall off the wagon will be documented in Heat magazine when it goes back to being fat again and has a momentary breakdown outside a trendy London bar and flashes it’s panties at the media. There'll be the all too familiar brief fling with a Big Brother Contestant and a brush with Class A Narcotics before finding salvation within Zoroastrianism.

Or better still, maybe there’s space for my paralysed toe in the paralympics.

Foot javelin anyone?

Ebay - Fleabay - cardboard box

Ok nothing much to say here other than whoooooohoooo, I'm flogging leather n rubber. Check it out peeps, the infamous footwear extraordinaire. And a space soon to exist under the stairs.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/130661700652?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649#ht_991wt_1206

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/130661689502?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649#ht_991wt_1206

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/130661686916?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649#ht_1093wt_1206

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/130661684336?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649#ht_1511wt_1206

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/130661680136?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649#ht_1322wt_1206

The time has come

I've been holding out for as long as I could but it's six months since the cryo and there's still an equal amount of discomfort in my left foot and my wallet from paying for the surgery. So it's time. Time to start off loading the herd.
They've been sat there under the stairs longer than Harry Potter; and now they need to go. Not only are they a constant reminder that I haven't been running since April 2009 but the woodlice have set up an 'Occupy' site behind the boxes. I'm not sure what tyranny I've imposed upon them but they're unhappy, something about giving a 'Bonus' to the dog. I've tried to explain it's the name of a biscuit but they're not having it.

The shoes are going on ebay and they're going on this week. It's going to be a mammoth task getting a large number of items up there, plus I'll have to set aside a day to take them to the Post Office to send them. It's a village Postie, they don't allow more than 10 items at a time. I know, I know, 'how quaint'...

So here's a bit of a turn up for the books on this blog, a pair of flats. I'm saying au revoir to a pair of black Ravel flats with a cute buckle across the front. And yes, smart arses, I did buy them from the children's section. To be fair, they're in great condition and they'd be perfect except for one thing, they're a size 2.5 and I'm a 3 or in European terms these are 35 and I'm 35.5. It's not a lot but trust me in this instance size really does matter.

Because I have no bumpy bit at the back of my heel I struggle to keep flats on, and slingbacks daaaahling, they're a bitch. So I thought in my infinite wisdom that if I bought a pair of flats that were a bit on the small side I'd keep them on through sheer force, almost like creating a vacuum with the shoe.

Alas no. Epic fail of epic proportions riding on the back of an unfathomably large elephant called Thrud, on steroids.

What happened was my toes were squashed and my heel was rubbed raw. Yeah lesson learned. On me flats need straps. Slingbacks? Well slingbacks, just no. Small feet, wide like a hobbit with no ability to keep shoes on. Am I just a mutant?

Perhaps my X-Man name should be Stub Foot. I'd have no particularly cool powers except crap feet, not much of a pull I grant you but the franchise is being milked for all it's worth, they might get around to my character eventually.

Patent Kurt's Hurts

OK I admit it, I haven't written because I’ve been sulking. Not only has my foot been giving me some proper aggro as the nerve has been going through the ‘I’m awake and I’m angry, what did you do to me, freeze me? I’m awake and I’m angry’ cycle. Then to top it off, I received confirmation that I didn’t get in to the London Marathon next year. I cancelled the hotel room in the huff. You can shove yer Premier Inn right in.

I couldn’t even get a place on a golden bond, even pledging to raise two grand isn’t enough to get you in. I bet some ‘K’ list celebrity that’s slept with someone who knows someone that’s worked with someone on the X Factor has got a place. They’ll be there at the opening of an envelope on the Friday night in Hoxton, necking glasses of Moet and Chandon and gromfing down plate after plate of some posh grub that I’m too bitter to remember the name of and then they’ll be trotting down the Strand on the Sunday, after taking twelve hours to do the marathon. Perhaps if you hadn’t had to stop off every fifteen minutes to touch up your lippy darling, you might have done it in less than seven hours. Pah.

‘Bitter, party of one’

It’s probably for the best though, given the amount of thrashing the nerve is giving me at the moment. I was so huffy that I thought 'sod it' and tortured myself by wearing the most amazingly, gorgeous pair of patent Kurt Geiger shoes I will ever own to a beautiful winter wedding last week. It’s not gone unnoticed that I have no photos of me on the day as the wife of the best man, however I do have two random photos on my phone of my feet in said shoes (exhibit A and B attached m'lud) To give me some dues they were taken before we had a sherry or two to toast the happy couple......and the brilliant best man’s speech.

Ahhhh, yes I remember these shoes, purchased about five years ago from House of Fraser at Meadowhell. They should have been well over a hundred quid but I spotted them at a reduced, bonzer price of £49. To be fair, there probably aren’t any pixie footed freaks out there that they’d fit, other than me. They are teen-mc-weeny and they make me almost tall, well tall-ish….less than small, let’s stick with less than small.

After wearing them for approximately thirteen hours last Saturday, including at least an hour having a good old boogie to Dazzling DJ Dave my feet were squealing with delight to be set free of the corsets that had bound them for so long and both my feet were shall we say, a tad on the 'sore' side on the Sunday. Thankfully I didn’t have to get up and toddle off for Marathon training.

Perhaps the ballot outcome wasn’t so bad
after all.
Pah!

Studmuffin or bust

So it’s two weeks since round two of the cryo and the pain kicked in after about day six. Thankfully gabapentin came to my aid, riding in on its 300mg yellow casing. It might be a while before I can, but I can’t wait to slip on these babies.

From the shoe stable of Mr Mr Kurt Geiger these are comedically called ‘Studmuffin’. Yep, seriously that’s the name on the box of these shoes. I bought these when I refused to be torn away from heels but knew that I had to make a change from the pointy-toed monsters that had led me down the painful garden path in my pre-neuroma days. Like an addict I told myself I could just have a heel without the pointy toe and get by, I could just get a small fix and that I would be ok, I could manage it, I could control my urges and desires, I would be ok having a small heel and a roomy toe. And pretty much, I was right.

These were the shoes I wanted, nay needed for a friend’s wedding in 2010. I wasn’t sure if I could make it through the day and night in the Studmuffins so I bought a relatively flat wedge back up pair of shoes from Dune that accompanied me to Stoke on Trent for the wedding and reception. The wedges gave me height without pain and also, two pairs of shoes for the same event with an excuse of wanting to ensure a pain free day, sneaky huh?

I ended up wearing the wedges in the day-time, they had the incredibly unimaginative name of “Madrid”, but then I slipped on the Muffins in the evening when we got back to the hotel. It was a good day and a good night and my foot didn’t hurt very much at all but to be honest that might have been the alcohol. Just saying….

Subsequently I have found that these shoes have become my greatest ally in the need for height coupled with the need for a pain free life. Whenever I have slipped on a dress over the summer they have been my gently caressing non-threatening friends whilst in the office, at a funeral, at a birthday party and at numerous other non-events where a dress called for heels to avoid the appearance of being the small, tubby lass with fat calves and ankles (cankles). I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get reacquainted with the muffins by the end of September when I’m off to a wedding. Quite frankly, if I have to wear casual slip-ons I might as well just tip up in a pink shell suit, yeah but, no but...

It’s the Muffins or bust.