Foot status: getting near the end

[cjsmith]

80: I've tried the things that probably had, oh, an eighty percent chance of curing me. (Seeing doctors.)

40: I've tried the things that had maybe a forty percent chance if I'm generous (physical therapy, orthotics, surgery).

10: I've tried some things that had maybe a ten percent chance (myofascial therapy, "anodyne" infrared therapy, chiropractic care).

I'm going to guess acupuncture is also in the 10% range. I might be a bit generous to put it at ten, but what the heck, I'll be generous today. Given that the podiatrists can't help, seeing one more type of doctor -- an orthopedist rather than a podiatrist -- is probably also in the 10% bucket. I'll try those two. Babying my feet as much as I can possibly manage for six months to a year is probably also around 10%.

5: Getting a doctor recommendation from retired physician / square-dance-friend in the Los Angeles area is maybe in the five percent range. I haven't done this yet.

1

Then I'm into the one percent bucket. There are endless things that might be charitably considered to have a one percent chance of just fortunately luckily happening to work for my problem. Note that none of this gets any less expensive, though its potential to help me becomes vanishingly small.

I can bleed away my time and energy and money fighting this problem less and less effectively, or I can spend my life living (what's left of) my life. Once I get into the one percent list I'm likely to opt for the latter. Not only do I not have infinite time or money or energy, I don't have infinite reserves of emotional strength for the hope and the disappointment.

In short, I'm not going to do much from the one percent list.

One way or another, this story probably ends in 2006.

Comments

[thatwesguy.livejournal.com]

It may be stupid or possibly even cruel to post without knowing at least something about your condition. So please forgive me if I'm being an idiot:

My take-away experience from having ripped an ACL in half during an other-wise-completely-routine skiing fall a year and a half ago is that the body is a hell of a piece of machinery. I don't mean that in some Northern-Californian spiritual way, but rather in the sense that the damn thing replaces damn near all -- if not literally all -- its parts on a regular basis, using nothing but its standard everyday fuel. The simple fact of this makes us all remarkably like the X-Men character Wolverine, only, well, slower about it. That which does not kill us does indeed make us stronger. Heck, the whole point of weightlifting is to break down muscle tissue in order to goad the body into repairing it, since the body tends to repair things in such a way that they are better than before such that it won't break again.

I have no right ACL. Turns out that that is a drag, in that my knee doesn't work as well as it used to. However, it does indeed work. It gets better at working every month (yes, it is still healing). These days I can even run for a few blocks, though I am disinclined to do so at all often. There are more uplifting factoids here, though: for example, my lungs give out before my knee when biking or climbing stairs.

Some years ago -- like 8th grade, I mean -- I overused my hands and developed an RSI that resulted in my hands going numb for minutes simply from holding objects such as hammers. Years later, I wound up aggravating the condition and had to sleep with splints for about eight months, which was approximately as much fun as it sounds. The problem was that my body was dealingwith the repeated acute injuries by allowing the area to become inflamed, since that's how useful stuff like blood is encouraged to congregate in healing areas. However, things are packed into the wrist pretty tightly, so the inflammation resulted in pinched nerves and less blood to the hands, vastly delaying healing and causing other problems. The only way out was to eliminate the constant re-injury and to give the body time to stop swelling and then to heal. Eight months, like I said. These days, that injury is firmly in my past, because I am extraordinarily aggressive about protecting my hands at the very first sign of injury. It's a habit, and not even disruptive, let alone annoying.

I guess my point is that sometimes the body is very slow to heal, especially when constant demands are placed on the area that requires healing. Babying your feet might be The Right Thing to do, but for all I know it might also be practically impossible. Still, I would advocate at least considering implementing whatever life changes would cause you to be able to live without the current demands you place on your feet for an extended period of time, just to see what the body manages to do when left to its own reparative devices.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

The short story: Two years and change, two doctors, four physical therapists, three sets of orthotics, two MRIs, one surgery (per foot), no diagnosis. No prognosis, no "here's your more than ten thousand dollars back", no remaining glimmerings of hope. Just the pain. No known cause.

My take-away from the last twenty-five months is other people get better.

Seriously. I've watched them. They break their legs and they're all discombobulated because for a while they can't walk right. They tear a muscle. They twist an ankle or break a metatarsal or they sprain something and have to stay off it for (gasp!) weeks. Then they get better, and they go back to being athletes, and I (who once dreamed of running a marathon) am still a cripple.

It stabs me like a knife.

Still, I would advocate at least considering implementing whatever life changes would cause you to be able to live without the current demands you place on your feet for an extended period of time, just to see what the body manages to do when left to its own reparative devices.

This might be a great idea.

The current demands on my feet are already as low as I know how to make them without a wheelchair. That's what I labeled my ten-percent up there: do very very little walking and absolutely no physical therapy or weight-bearing exercise of any kind. It's very limiting. I wouldn't have believed, before I had this problem, how frustrating it would be to be unable to go to the mall or jog just a little to catch up with someone or carry a heavy object or ever stand on tiptoe or go outside just for the pleasure of it. I've given up all the hobbies I loved most: running, hiking, backpacking, square dancing. (I was really surprised how much that hurt, giving up square dancing. It had been a huge part of my life.) Sorry, I'm venting. Back to the subject.

I presume you're advocating that last little bit: be a full-time wheelchair patient. Of course, it's not little except in terms of numbers of steps saved. Just using the bathroom...! I got a taste of that for a few days after the double foot surgery, and holy moly it was rough. If the Devil had offered me one below-the-knee amputation in trade for one usable leg, I would have thought about the deal for way too long.

I figure if my attempt right now doesn't work, going wheelchair-bound is probably a one-percent. It *might* work -- any one-percent might work -- but I really am not sure I have it in me to be a wheelchair-bound patient for a year or so for a one-percent.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

You can probably tell I was in a bit of a grim mood when I wrote that last comment. My apologies for venting my frustrations all over you. You didn't deserve that. I'm sorry.

One thing I've thought of, along the lines you suggested ("live without the current demands you place on your feet"), is to be completely non-weight-bearing on one foot at a time. People manage this one all the time. I know how to go to the bathroom with one bad leg. Six months on crutches, six months easing that foot back into use, another six months on crutches for the other foot...? Might work. Another one-percenter. :-)