Without the Use of Feet

How do you go about your daily routine without being able to walk?

I am trying to figure that out right now.

Three weeks ago, on a mission to lose the 30 lbs my doctor says I need to lose, I went on an hour long hike, while in Portland, with cats being fixed at the FCCO clinic.  I was wearing bad shoes.  On the sole, on the outside edge, they had a ridge, that kept turning my foot to the inside.  It felt awkward and irritating while hiking.  I knew I should have tossed those shoes.  But I don't have many other shoe options.  I have some sandals and I have some flip flops and I have some hiking boots.  And those shoes, that I wore that day, that after that day, that very night, I tossed into the trash in disgust.

By the end of the hike, I was hobbling in terrible pain.  I couldn't touch my heel, at the back, it was so painful.  I could not walk without pain at the bottom edge of my heel and the outside edge of my foot.

I still can't.

I saw the doctor.   She said it was some inflammation of something, a ligament or tendon or bursa.  She said those take forever to heal and to contact her if it was not better in two months time.

It's getting worse.  The pain at times makes me want to scream.

Sometimes the end of my heel and outside edge swells into a bubble.

I got some shoe inserts that only made it worse.  I abandoned them quickly.

I've been on foot injury sites trying to figure out what I did to my poor foot that day.  Might be a heel bruise which results in a displaced heel fat tissue pad and leaves you walking on bone basically.  Might be inflammation of the bursa where the achilles tendon attaches. A lot of my pain is right there, at the very back of my heel. I just don't know.

I could have stress fractured my heel bone for all I know.

The advice online is universal--RICE---rest, ice, comopression, elevation.

But how do you stay off a foot when you live alone and there's constant work to do?  You can't do much when using crutches.  My brother ruptured his achilles tendon.  Prior to that, he had inflamed it, by constantly wearing work boots.  He got a cortisone injection, but this probably weakened the tendon, although it provided temporary relief of the pain.  So not that long later, his tendon suddenly ruptured.  He said he didn't know why, but when it happened, the pain was so sudden and intense, he walked upstairs and sat down.

He had surgery.  Afterwards, he found life with crutches unbearable.  They were useless in letting him do anything, but move from point A to point B.   He had a business to run, that required use of his hands.  He searched the web and found this. It's called the IWalk-Free.

You know what might even be cooler, in this design?  At the bottom, if the foot section included a section above it with heavy duty springs or hydraulic pistons, encased of course, that would give you some give and some spring! Or a hydraulic piston attached down the back (where your achilles tendon runs), attaching to the back of the fake foot part, with another piston at the front, attached to the top mid section of the hinged fake foot, to work in opposition.  If the fake foot was attached to the main "leg" via a ball joint, and so were the piston heads, you might even achieve controlled swivel in your fake foot!

He was going to send it to me, since he is years healed now.  But he couldn't find it.  Later, he said he'd found it and will send it.  It hasn't arrived yet but I hope it gets here soon.  It's a peg leg and most doctors don't know the option exists.  He's loaned it out multiple times since his own injury healed, he says.

It lets you do what you need to do, despite an injury.

I've not known what to do.  If I should be pushing through the pain and that the exercise will help it or just what.  But online, the concensus is to stay off it.  You don't walk on a hurting foot or you hurt it more.

I'm paying for years of sinful behavior.  Walking, up on my feet, sometimes 16 or 18 hours a day, wearing very bad shoes.   I have long narrow feet with high arches.  Try finding shoes that fit abnormally long harrow high arch feet on a very tight budget.  I want to learn to make my own shoes, so I don't have to worry about finding some on the cheap somewhere, often used, possibly harboring various fungi in them.  I don't like buying used shoes for that reason, what might be in there, like foot fungus.  I spray them with fungicides for a week before first wearing used shoes.  Used shoes are usually broken down in the sole already, no good for support.

So, I have to learn to make my own shoes.  Just a fact of life.  I hope to learn to make really good support shoes.  When all else fails, do it yourself, I figure.  This youtube channel provides excellent tutorials on shoe making, a lost art, and references for further advancement of knowledge.  Check it out!

In the meantime, like it or not, I have to stay off my bad foot.  Another fact of life    Or I could rupture something that then would require surgery and months off my foot.  Bad!  Those litterboxes don't clean themselves!

And as a footnote (ha, get it?), three more of the 8 cats abandoned in Albany have moved on.  These three went to a Portland area rescue.  The first three went to a Salem rescue.  The three adult females left for Portland today. Goodbye Whisper, Secrets and Carly.  That leaves only two more to place.  That ain't bad!