Not sore like it’s going to fall off or some shit, not sore like Oh My Fucking God Why Is This Happening To Me, and not sore like Don’t Be An Idiot, Go See A Doctor. More the sort of Huh, It’s Been Sore For A While In A Mild But Noticeable Way, Perfect For Seeking Gratuitous And Probably Potentially Fatal Internet Medical Advice kind of sore. So here I freaking am to do exactly that.
See, we had a pumpkin carving party, which was awesome because all these local families showed up and the kids were stampeding around going apeshit while the grownups eviscerated gallons of gourd guts on the dining room table and got all obsessively artistic with the little skinny serrated pumpkin carving knives (sweet little devices, where had they been all my life?). And as a bonus we’d set up our ginormous camping tent outside on our deck. The kids were into it for approximately ten minutes, and then it was too rainy and too cold and they all came inside and freaked out downstairs in the rec room. So that was all great.
At five o’clock the next morning I wake up and hear the fucking thing banging around out there. It’s not like I didn’t know the goddamned storm was coming, I’m a weather junkie and I usually know what the hell is going to happen. Why in God’s name we put the damned tent up when I knew the storm was coming is another question altogether. In any case, now it’s blowing thirty MPH and the tent is getting squeezed into an unnatural shape. So up and at 'em, my poor flu-addled wife and I got the thing down and set back up in the garage. Which is full of crap because we only moved into this house six months ago and if that’s enough time for you to unpack everything you own, you’re one lucky sonofabitch. So I’m pretty sure that while doing all this, I stepped with my full weight on something on the floor – possibly the crossbar of a folded-up camp chair, or something – and basically fucked up the arch of my foot.
Because that’s the whole trouble, see. The arch of my foot has been sore ever since then. The first day or two it was bad enough that I was limping a little to keep weight off it. After that it got steadily better, though still it would twinge if I actually walked more than five minutes or so. Forget about running, which during the spell of good weather last month I was doing every darn day at work – what better way to get your head out of the fricking code than to go jogging under blue skies?
Anyway, tonight while trick-or-treating with the kids – which was groovy in the extreme, young kids on Halloween is pure joy bombs primed with massive quantities of sugar – I felt like I hadn’t left enough candy on the front porch for treaters visiting while we were off with our kids. So I ran back home. And it felt SO GODDAMNED GOOD to just run as fast as I could for a couple of blocks. Yay, I thought! My foot is better!
Except now here I am typing this ridiculous post (with the cat on my lap, FTW) and my foot is, yes, sore. Seems like it wasn’t ready for the stress yet.
My best guess, having read exactly no information about foot soreness whatsoever, is that my (naturally pretty damn tight) arch got stretched, or otherwise tweaked, in some way that is similar to tendinitis. The body’s connective tissue is goddamned picky stuff, which it is allowed to be because my God, it’s not easy to cope with over 150 pounds of body weight slamming down once a second or so. Pissing off the connective tissue = slow recovery. I would guess I should probably take it easy on the ol’ foot for another two weeks or so, and then ease back into my previous activity level over the next two weeks after that. If I want cardio, I should get into rowing or something where the arch of the foot isn’t under heavy load.
Am I right? Or should I get to a goddamned doctor before the Aldebaranian space leech eats its way out of my foot?