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?