"Point your feet in the direction you want to go, and make sure that your toes are the last thing to leave the ground." My son tried to coach me on how to walk.
Walking sounds so easy. I certainly never anticipated having any trouble walking.
Ironically, the difficulty came after surgery to repair the bone structure in my feet. I'd known that they had problems since the bunions appeared while my age was still in single digits. My big toes turned sharply toward the other toes. My big toe toenail ended up almost dead center of the foot, and the bone in the joint jutted outward in the opposite direction. The other toes were crowded. On my left foot, the big toe actually overlapped the other toes. Plus, it was turned at a 45 degree angle, with the side of the toe facing downward, and the nail facing the other toes.
Naturally, it was hard to find shoes that were wide enough. Having anything even a little tight across the bunions caused sharp pain through the whole foot, getting worse as time passed. Sandal straps were the worst offenders. I could only wear sandals if the knob of bone jutted out between the straps. High heels were horrific.
I never really understood it when people would insist that you should balance on the balls of your feet, because I couldn't. I assumed that it was just bad balance, because if I tried, I did not become stable, I became wobbly and unstable. I couldn't tiptoe more than a few steps, either. Still, I was never going to be an athlete or a dancer, so I didn't think too much about it. Some people are awkward.
I remember asking, as a child, why we had these big, long feet anyway, because the entire front half seemed like a waste. I was assured that without the front half of the foot, humans couldn't walk or balance, but that made no sense to me. I wasn't using mine, and I was walking upright. ("Of course you're using it!" people said.)
My perception was further complicated by having to rock my weight onto my left foot when I was standing. If I tried to put equal weight on my feet, I again got very wobbly and likely to fall over. This was explained in junior high school, when I was found to have scoliosis and uneven hips. Having one hip higher meant one leg was shorter, so the weight had to rest mostly on the shorter leg, with the other one just providing balance. This is also why I tend to stand with one leg out to the side. (Think of how you balance on any chair with uneven legs.)
Still, people kept telling me that I was mistaken when I said that I couldn't have decent balance with equally distributed weight. Or, like my husband, they encouraged me to get shoe lifts for the short side; I figured that would just transfer the strain to my hips and back. Besides, I functioned fine if left to my own devices.
Of course, my feet hurt more than was convenient. Still, that was to be expected, because something was wrong with them. I gritted my teeth when I'd mention pain and someone would immediately say, "Lose weight and exercise!" When I was 12 years old, 5 foot 8 and 125 pounds, they hurt, in the same ways and at the same times as they did decades later.
I became the queen of comfortable shoes, after spending my younger years trying to wear pretty ones.
When I was 28, with great insurance, I finally went to see a podiatrist about getting my feet fixed. My husband pushed me to go, after repeatedly watching me try on shoe after shoe that wouldn't fit. "There's a lot more going on in here than bunions," the doctor said.
He ran a single finger up the back of my ankles. "Does this hurt?"
"Yes."
"Mmm hmm," he said. He ran the finger up the back of my calves. "Does this hurt?"
"Yes."
I was surprised. If you had asked me if those places hurt without him touching them, I would have said "no." But he seemed to have an uncanny ability to create pain with just a touch of his index finger, zeroing in on sore spots I didn't know were there.
After several more simple touches and "How about this?" queries, all answered with "Yes," he had me stand on the x-ray machine. "I thought so," he said.
Among the revelations to me was a diagnosis of collapsed arches. I stared at my foot, looking at its lovely arch. "But I can see the arch, see the curve in my foot."
"Yes, but every time you step, it does this," he said, cupping his hand and then flattening it out. "Every step overextends your bone structure, and stretches the tendons and ligaments over the bone in your heel. That's why these," rubbing the back of my ankle and foot again, "hurt. It pulls everything out of place with every step. Pretty soon, everything is fatigued and swelling. If it's severe enough, eventually it can tear the muscles."
Holy cow; who knew?
I suddenly remembered my dad telling me that men with "flat feet" were excused from military service during the draft, because they couldn't pass the physical, and were unable to march over distances.
The bad news - fixing it would mean "a minimum of four to six weeks off your feet." I had three kids - I had a one year old. I did not have the time or capability to take a month off. My husband went to work at 3 a.m.; how would I do anything? Plus, my house is two stories; what about stairs?
He advised me to buy over the counter arch supports, and put them in my shoes. "After the surgery, you'll need custom supports, but there's no sense getting them now, before it's repaired."
I still thought that he had it wrong. This just sounded too odd. Arch supports were made of foam and plastic, and they were all of 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick - how could that little difference change anything? How could these thin little $5 items make any difference?
So, I bought some flimsy little Dr. Scholl's arch supports and put them in my flimsy canvas shoes before we headed to Disneyland.
Oh, ye of little faith.
It was like the heavens opened and angels sang. I love Disneyland, but it usually left me limping. By evening, I would be in almost blinding amounts of pain, wondering if I could make it back to the hotel room. But with these ridiculous slivers of foam, it didn't hurt. The rest of my body tired out before my feet did, something that had never, ever happened before. I became convinced that the podiatrist was a genius.
I began refusing to wear anything without arch supports. I started living in athletic shoes. Sure, they looked clunky and way too casual, but who cared? They were miraculous. I would have worn them with my dresses to church if I didn't think it would horrify my husband. Cute little ballet flats no longer looked quite so appealing. Nothing had ever mitigated the pain before; now that I knew that it was possible, I was not going to give it up.
I wasn't pain free, just agony free. Pain still happened - it just happened a lot less, and a lot less severely. Having to spend a day - or even an evening - in dress shoes still had me limping, not only that day but through the next, too. And this is with dress shoes that are plain and frankly masculine. Every now and then I can find decent Mary Janes, but usually, I'm in loafers if I have to dress up.
I photograph weddings for a living, and it's so aggravating to me that, in order to be looked at as a competent professional, I have to wear shoes that honestly make me less effective.
Years later, a PA tried to tell me that arch supports were bad for people with collapsed arches. "It'll just feel like walking on a rock." Maybe to some, but I'm not giving mine up!
Anyway, I was in my late 40s before I had the time, money and capability to have the surgery. Discovering that many of the bones in each of my feet were physically incapable of supporting weight was surprising. "Apparently, almost half of the bones in my foot were not load bearing, even though they were designed to be. My podiatrist took hold of my foot and folded it lengthwise, flapping it like a wing. "See that?" he said. "It's not supposed to do that." ("Counting Down," Dec. 2013)
The surgery recovery period kicked my butt, ("Handicapped Access," Dec. 2014) but I was sure that as soon as I was out of the cast, everything would be fabulous. I neglected to really ask myself what building new muscle memory would be like.
After nine weeks in a cast, even the muscles I was used to using were out of practice. The bigger problem was, I couldn't walk the way I was used to. I couldn't even stand the way I was used to. If I tried, my muscles screamed and my ankle burned. I was wobbly. Plus, my foot felt as though it had had hinges installed. I was used to picking up and putting down my foot pretty much as a whole, but suddenly, it wanted to bend. It was really puzzling.
Nothing was instinctive any more. My right foot had not yet been operated on and felt normal, but my left felt entirely different.
I tried to describe its functioning to my husband. "It's like it hits at the heel, then the whole foot rolls forward, and it pushes off from the toes."
He gave me a look. "Congratulations," he said drily. "That's called walking."
"Hey, I've been walking for more than 40 years, and it's never done that before!"
Muscles that had been unused for literally my entire life now screamed at me, as well, as they suddenly had to work. Everything was sore, all the time. Plus, I had to really think every time I stepped. If I got tired or distracted, I rolled to the outside, and my ankle burned. I'm not sure exactly what the support in there is made out of, but I'm assuming it's supposed to help keep me from crushing things.
I'd never been aware of rocking my weight to the outside edge of my foot, even though the soles of my shoes wore out on the outside edge, and stayed pristine on the opposite edge. Now, I very exaggeratedly rolled my weight to the inside of my foot, and tried to balance the weight on the ball of the foot, but my shoes (and the doctor) said I was still rolling to the outside.
After I had the second foot operated on, nothing felt recognizable any more.
Even two years later, my toes still surprise me. Trying to put any weight on the toes, especially the big toe, had always crunched my toes tightly together; it goes without saying that it was unstable, and hurt. Now, putting weight on the toes causes them to SPREAD. I have never, ever experienced this! My toes are misshapen from decades of crowding, and I can't believe that they spread apart now - or that the more weight they take, the farther they spread. It's amazing.
I expected this all to be easy, but I was having to actively think about how I put my feet down, pick them up, do anything, two years later. I'm doing better, continually, but it's slow. My chiropractor, working on knee pain, said, "Of course your knee hurts. You don't know how to stand on your feet." UGH!
Sometimes, I'd tackle largish goals. In Hawaii with my family, I decided to walk three and a half miles, over uneven terrain. I was slow, but I made it. Back at our rental house, I again took ruthless advantage of the fact that my son is in massage therapy school. "Can you work on my knee?" It didn't hurt in any way that made sense. It hurt right across the top of my knee, right at the connection with my thigh.
He'd press certain muscles. "Does that hurt?" After a series of answers like, "No," and, "A little," he pressed on the inside of my knee, and I shrieked like a Banshee.
Trying to discover what I was doing wrong, he asked me to walk. After watching me, he said, "Look down at your feet." I looked down. I guessed. I guessed some more. I could not figure out what was wrong. He had to point it out to me, with a sigh. "Your foot is turned sideways." Well - yeah. Is that a problem? It's only about 25 degrees. And I'm going forward.
Apparently, this is an issue.
I'm trying to correct it, but pointing my foot forward feels like I'm twisting the whole leg. Plus, with knees that bow inward and backward, it's difficult to point my leg forward without my knees hitting each other. Is walking supposed to be this complicated?
My reality is further skewed by decades of apparently unreliable perception. I recently went back to my son for help. "I must be doing something new wrong. It's really weird. Standing still for a long time hurts more than walking."
"That's actually really normal."
"IT IS? How can that be?" I mean, my whole life, FIVE DECADES, walking has been actual work, and standing just, well, standing. Not working as hard. Of course things hurt more when they're working. Right?
Apparently, wrong. Standing is more stress. Who knew? Not me.
On the other hand - go, me, something is reacting normally!
Sometimes, someone will want me to do something like dance. Are you kidding? I'm still learning to walk!
I finally got those custom inserts, though, and I'm telling you, hallelujah! You can't build new muscle memory if you don't know what to do, or do it consistently. These are helping on both counts. I no longer have to think every time I step.
If I'm in a tunnel, I think I see the proverbial light.
