My Foot Is Sore

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?

Relax, man. A few weeks recovery time are perfectly normal for acutely overstrained muscles and related tissue. Whatever small tissue damage resulted from your one misstep is going to heal up just fine. I’m pretty sure it didn’t instantly annihilate the arch of your foot.

Rest is good, but an x-ray could be an idea too…

Yeah, don’t be such a tight arch.

Go to a doctor. Someone has to have created a bot by now to reply to these damned “I’m about to die but I’d rather post about it” threads.

It’s a morton’s neuroma. Or a tumor. Or possibly a strain. Try some stretches. Or amateur self-surgery. Or see a doctor.

Go see a doctor, but I doubt he’s going to tell you to do more than rest. I bent my right ring finger back playing basketball a few years ago, and it was painful to bend it at the first knuckle for a few month’s afterwards. Yeah, it sucks that you can’t really stop using your foot (I’m right handed, so I couldn’t just stop touching things), but it’ll feel better eventually.

Go to an athletic shoe store and see if there are any shoes that help. When I broke my toe a couple of months ago, a pair of New Balance shoes helped a ton.

Your shoes are too tight. But it doesn’t matter, because you’ve forgotten how to dance.

You had a small tumor on the bottom of you foot but when you stepped on it it got squished and popped, leaking toxic foot cancer juice all over your foot. What you’re feeling is your your body reacting to toxic tumor juice. You’re going down Bob Marley’s path.

Repoman - I still haven’t heard anybody chiming in here who is a doctor, but you have always struck me as a pretty sensible individual so, of course, sort through the chaff of the insane suggestions here and follow your own instincts.

Mine own would be, I’m probably a lot like you (likely older, 53 now). I don’t run to the doctor every time something happens because I have learned the body is a pretty miraculous machine that has its own healing and recuperative powers. I’ve also noticed I am one impatient SOB so I want things that go wrong (or hurt, or annoy me) to be rectified instantaneously but many times waiting they get better on their own and I don’t have to deal with the further impatience of dealing with our health care system in the US. Still, there comes a point, and you have an actual injury, so don’t be one of those dopes who has to be on their deathbed before seeking professional help.

I don’t think you mentioned taking any anti-inflammatory medicine, if so, I don’t see much harm in mildly overdosing yourself with ibuprofen (Hans will perhaps be along shortly to chide me for this suggestion). Once I discovered you could do that before getting tattoos, I was pissed off about all the tattoos I got without ibuprofen swimming in my veins.

However, you’ve heard the same thing I have, over the years (not yet mentioned here), that the foot (and, I think our hands) have an amazing number of bones in them, so if you don’t see improvement, do see a doc and get an xray. But, it could be they can’t do much for you than to confirm what happened and to stay off it and let it heal.

Sounds like this is keeping you from your regular exercising program (running?) - you know damn well running is one of those exercises that puts an unbelievable amount of stress on your foot when it hits the ground (what, somehow more than your own body weight)? I’m not a physicist so don’t hold me to it, just knock it off and tell your body it deserves a break from your regular exercise program. Or, do it at a lower level (if walking isn’t hurting, or stressing your arch, do that instead, walking is very underrated and you can still get some aerobic benefit from it).

Thanks folks. I probably will see a physical therapist at our gym sometime this week, just to be on the safe side. I can’t imagine anything is broken in there, but why not get an Expert Opinion? (Actually I’ll probably ask what the bill is first…)

But yeah, this feels like a “will get better on its own if I can learn some motherfucking patience” kind of deal.

Just wanted to chime in with a recent experience in case it will help with your patience: I recently broke the second-to-last toe on one foot by kicking a bed frame leg, and I did go to a doc & had an x-ray. I was really worried that I’d broken a lot more than the one toe; because it felt like the impact had crushed a bunch of stuff behind it. The whole foot – especially the arch – hurt like hell for weeks, and I even had discoloration and pain in my shin. However, the x-ray clearly showed that only my toe was broken.

So whatever other trauma is going on (does cartilage bruise?) certainly hurts as much as the break, and is taking almost as long to heal, but it -is- healing. The biggest problem I’m finding is that it’s super easy to re-injure everything just by stepping on a stray sock or turning my foot the wrong way. And the less it hurts, the more often I do this kind of thing because I forget to be careful. (why do we even HAVE toes, we’re just asking for trouble with them sticking out there like that!) It’s been about 6 weeks now and I can wear some shoes without pain, so I think it’s reasonable that yours is taking a long time to heal too. I’m sure the healing would go faster if we rested more, but honestly, who’s got a life these days that will accommodate that?

Just cut it off already.

Gwendraeth, surely you know that like sloths, we need toes. I’m told they are invaluable for balancing, if we took your toes away from you, you would have a very very difficult time walking at all, which would make life considerably more difficult.

I’m glad you are healing up (you brought back memories of stubbing toes on those frikkin wheels they have on the legs of beds - they hide there and then bang you are in pain and seeing stars!). I think someone could patent a device that made those out of some nice soft malleable material and retire a millionaire, within weeks (send me a share of your patent proceeds please).

Gewndraeth, your anecdote is more relevant than you know, because I’m pretty sure I did break – or at least badly sprain – my little toe on that foot. It’s my right foot, and I’m pretty sure it thinks I hate it, because last year I stubbed the adjoining (fourth) toe on that foot, quite severely and then it got stung by a yellowjacket the very next week – swelled up like mad and everything. And this year I was getting up fron the dinner table, turned around quickly to walk into the kitchen, and kicked the fucking edge of the kitchen door with my fast-moving-on-its-way-to-the-destination right foot, causing epic pain in the little toe.

So yeah, it might have been already inflamed from that (which happened last month), and it might be all pissed at me now. My coworker across the hall pointed out that shit like this can lead to long-lasting effects (if you start walking on it funny and it heals in a misaligned position, or suchlike). Time to get an internal diagnosis of some kind, I think, just to be on the safe side.

At least I learned what I was doing wrong – I realized that when changing direction rapidly, especially from a standing start, I tend to lead with my right foot. If I’m headed somewhere too quickly, I will often not really know what’s over there at foot level. Moral: look before you kick, because every walk starts with a kick…

Nut up and cut your own foot off. It’s what is in style this season.

DGS beat me to it. Saw it off with a pocket knife.