No Short Circuits for This Gal!

There's a fun event going on tonight and I can't wait to see a lot of old friends. It's a party for folks who lived in our part of town when we were all in high school and it's always well attended. It never disappoints and gets more and more fun each year. But there will be standing; lots of standing! No dancing; but standing around and reliving the "good old days." Standing around is very hard and painful for me. I could probably find a place to sit the whole time, but that's just not me. I have to mingle! I'll be "working the room" like a politician, making sure I find and hug every single person I know. And a few people I won't know until tonight. 


But if I want to enjoy myself I have to play by the "foot rules" that I've developed through the years. I have to try to "baby" my feet all day and get them ready for more standing and movement than they can normally handle. If I've had a bad foot day, then going to any event is out. I'd have to skip it all together. So I have to make sure that I have a good foot day today!


Before I begin to get ready, I'll ice my feet for at least an hour or two; propping them as high as I can to get the blood flowing away from them. I'll soak them in cool water after my bath because hot water wakes up all the nerves and really intensifies the pain. Heat expands. Cold contracts. I always have to keep those two rules of physics in mind when dealing with my feet.  The damaged nerves are like live wires and my job is to keep them from short-circuiting! 


The band-aids come next; careful not to cover my gorgeous red toenail polish. I'm a person one would refer to as a vain pain gal.  I deal with pain the best I can, but let it be known that I'm always concerned with how I look while doing it. While I don't wear high heels or any shoe I'd consider painful, I am very particular about what goes with what. The clothing I choose is dependent on what kind of shoes I can wear as much as on where I'm going. For tonight, I have a pair of well-worn MBT sandals that help to keep the weight off the balls of my feet. Not the best solution but as good as it gets. The soles are not nearly soft enough for me, but I can get by with them for a while. I'll alternate "working the room" with sitting and resting. If I can find a way to make an ice pack, there will be one under my feet as often as I can get it there.


The bandaging process is a tedious but important one. I bandage every toe usually susceptible to blistering or callouses; but not too tight in case my feet swell. Any place that the shoe might rub and make me uncomfortable will get attention. A grain of sand under my foot feels like a rock, so I have to make sure the insides of the sandals are smooth.  Obviously, my feet have to be wiped clean as well. After I go through the mental check list and the shoes are on, I check to make sure I have all the obvious problem spots taken care of. I stop long enough to say a prayer and ask God to help get me through whatever event I'm headed for.


At the party, I'll try not to get cornered in long conversations once my feet start hurting, which will probably be about ten minutes into the party. I'll make an excuse, find a chair and rest for a while. If I do get stuck in a conversation I can't get away from, or one I can't move to a place where I can sit, time to leave the party will come much quicker. I hate it when that happens, but it happens and I have to deal with it. I never have to remind my husband that if I give him "the look" that says "we have to leave NOW." He knows that it means NOW.

So I must get on with the job of babying my feet for the rest of the day; preparing for the big event. Maybe I'll see you there? If not, I'll let you know how the vain pain gal makes it through the party!  

The Surgery was a Success but the Patient Died!

I saw a new foot doctor last week; an orthopedist who specializes in problems from the knee down. This was my first "foot visit" since 1994, after the last of many foot surgeries. I don't know what I expected to accomplish with this exam, but I wanted someone to take a fresh look and tell me if anything can be done. The best hope is that it could be done without surgery. I need help with the awful foot pain and wanted to see if he had any helpful advice. I wanted to have them examined by someone familiar with the technology that has emerged since my last foot surgeries.


I really liked the new doc. As I waited in the exam room, I was happy to see that it was filled pictures, posters and memorabilia of LSU sports. I knew right away that I had a bond with this young doctor through knowledge of unusual foot problems, along with an enthusiastic love of LSU sports. When he came in, I introduced him to the what would probably be the best looking pair of "feet from hell" he will ever have an opportunity to examine. 


He was impressed with the brilliant array of Band-Aids covering my toes. In all, there were probably six or eight bandage strips. I'd purposely left the bandages on my feet; mostly because I needed them to pad the blisters, callouses and pain spots beneath them. But I also wanted to show him how I survive day-to-day foot pain. I pad the places that hurt most and try to move on with my day. I uncovered all the spots as we reviewed the long list of prior surgeries. We talked about the unusual aspects of my surgical history which covered about a 10-year period from 1985 to 1994. We discussed the reasons that the last five or six surgeries were performed in The Texas Medical Center in Houston. 


At the time, the foot pain kept getting worse instead of better. Since there was no orthopedic "foot" specialist here in Baton Rouge at that time, I wanted to ensure that I had no more "botched" surgeries and that I had the best possible care I could find. He apparently agreed that I'd found good help. He referred to the x-rays and showed me that, from an orthopedic standpoint, my feet had healed perfectly. He was impressed that, on the x-rays, he could barely see where the surgeries had been performed. The x-rays showed little evidence to match the numerous surgical scars on both feet. 


On the screen at least, they looked perfect. All the bones were straight and showed visible evidence that the surgeon had done a great job and my feet had healed as they were supposed to. Indeed, on the screen, they looked like normal feet. He said most of his foot patients could only wish for x-rays that looked quite so normal. Deceiving to say the least!


He looked at the freshly unbandaged spots as I explained where the most of the foot pain surfaces. We discussed the long history of recurring neuromas and how the nerve damage that ensued is not reversible. 


His opinion was much the same as my own, that pain from the nerve damage is here to stay and I should continue to deal with is as I have been. The blisters and callouses, he explained, are simply the result of the way I walk on my feet. It's the way my weight is distributed when I walk. It seems that because of the nerve damage, I unconsciously try to compensate by shifting weight away from the nerve center. Unfortunately, that puts added stress on other parts of my feet. The results come in the form of blisters between my toes, along with scattered and predictable callouses over the longer term.


I do have to admit that I gave doc a bit of a pause when I explained that, through the years, I've found that no amount of pain medication will help the nerve pain in my feet. On the other hand, I've found that alcohol does help. "Hey, a Margarita or two and I may be ready to dance."  There was a definite pause and a nearly audible gasp. I quickly followed with, "But lucky for me, I don't like alcohol. And I've witnessed far too much alcohol abuse to MAKE myself drink something I really don't like. Maybe an occasional glass of wine or a Margarita but basically, I don't routinely consume alcohol."  I definitely saw a moment of relief cover his face as he breathed a sigh of relief.  I don't use alcohol as a means of relieving foot pain. Whew! 

So. That's it. It's "the way I walk on my feet!" Not much I can do or say about that. But he recommended more "creature comforts" which will require frequent visits to my old friend "Dr. Scholls" on store shelves. He recommended toe separators, toe covers and some expensive memory-foam insoles. Wow, if I had a dollar for every pair of expensive insoles that have made the pain disappear!  Hmm. By now, I'd probably have . . . a dollar? No wait. I haven't found them yet. And, by the way, the new creature comforts haven't added any more relief than I'd found prior to this visit.


I think my pain management doctor put it best when she said it was an obvious case of what doctor's refer to as "the surgery was a success but the patient died." My foot surgery, from the view on an x-ray, was completely successful. But my feet still hurt like hell!


So the bottom line is that I have a new foot doctor and he has determined that there's still not much that can be done to help my foot pain. Any additional surgery would be intense and probably counter-productive. So I continue to cover most of my toes with bandage tape. I pad the callouses to help ease the pain. I still can't wear shoes that put pressure on the spot where there used to be a bunion. I still can't wear shoes that put weight on the balls of my feet due to the irreversible nerve damage. My toes still rub together and create painful blisters! In short, life goes on. 


Maybe it's just me but it's still hard to comprehend how, in this day in time, I'm still forced to allow a three-to-four square inch area on each foot to control my life. But it happens. My life of "walking on broken glass" continues.

Time Out

We've been on vacation so I haven't been faithful to my blog spot. More importantly, my computer has been out. Like dead. Gone. Totally unresponsive! Ahhhhh yes! Dealing with "technicians" from far across the world has not been entertaining. In fact, it's tested my patience to the limit. What's worse, it certainly wasn't getting my computer fixed. 

So I couldn't keep up with ANYTHING while we were gone. My work, my family, my friends, Facebook and blog page - I was totally out of touch. Once I got home, I still had to face the matter of a broken computer. So, now armed with a new hard drive and even a new keyboard, I am ready to get back writing because there is lots to talk about! 

When I finally do get back to my blog page, you'll get to hear about a week of walking a huge golf course in Kentucky and going dancing in Nashville. You guessed it - on broken glass all the way. Also, I have a new foot doctor who agrees, "why yes, you've got awful pain with THOSE feet!" 

But we had a wonderful vacation and I can't wait to get back to my blog. So much to tell; so little time.

How am I doing . . . so far?

I have such mixed emotions about my age. In most ways, I absolutely love it! It's great to stand back and see that we've done a tremendous job with our daughters. I'm delighted that both of our girls have been successful in previously male-dominated professions. It makes me even happier to look into the beaming faces of my grandchildren and see so much of their mothers. The influence of their fathers is also there, to be sure - but I'm speaking here as a parent and grandparent. I can finally stand back, take a deep breath and say "yes, thank you God, my life has been happy and successful."  My grandchildren reach out to me and I hear a constant stream of "I love you GiGi" and my heart wants to jump right out of my body!

But with advancing age comes problems I'd much rather ignore. Mostly, I pay for the activities of my youth; with pain! It gives new meaning to the adage, "If I'd known I was going to live this long I would have taken much better care of myself." Multiply that times ten for me!

And in keeping with my "broken glass" theme, I've finally made an appointment with a new orthopedic doctor. I just want him to take a fresh look at my "healed" feet and tell me if there's anything he can do to increase my mobility without pain. Any small improvement would be great!

My feet limit my abilities somewhat, but so far, I think I'm doing just fine!

Shattered Glass

When I first decided to write this blog, it was supposed to be a humorous account of my ongoing foot pain. I'd written several chapters of what I hope will someday be a book and I thought this would be a great place to get those thoughts written and read on a regular basis. But the truth is, through the years, my "broken glass" has grown to affect so much more than my feet. For starters, I don't usually feel physically well enough to write anything very clever or funny. The other thing is that since I have so much body-wide pain it's not always possible to sit here and write anything worthy of being enjoyably read by others.
So I have reached into the depths of my pain-filled body and made a decision to write more often and write shorter accounts of my day and whatever comes with it. My blogs won't necessarily be linked to these awful feet, but trust me when I tell you the foot pain is always here! My future blogs will reflect more of what my days are like. The good, the bad and the ugly. Honestly, these days when the rest of my body hurts so badly, I tend to forget about my foot pain. As much as I wanted the foot pain to stop controlling my life, this is definitely NOT the way I wanted it to happen.
Now. About that body-wide pain. What's that all about? Physically, I'm a well person. I lead a very active and happy life. I do lots of volunteer work, though not nearly as much as I would if I had less pain or feet that moved faster and without pain. No illness. No disease. I don't have anything that I will die from; although I sometimes feel like the pain will certainly kill me! That's a joke, of course, but sometimes one has to wonder, how much longer can I take this?
I went to a new pain management doctor recently and she asked me to describe where the pain is worse. I laughed, holding up a few strands of hair while telling her her it starts right at the tip end of my hair shaft and ends at the very tip of my longest toe. And everywhere in between. I laughingly refer to my husband as "batman" because I swear that during the night he grips a baseball bat and beats the crap out of me. That's how I feel most mornings when I wake up - including today. Either that or like a bus ran over me.  A BIG bus! But the batman joke is absurd because, if it were not for my lovingly helpful and understanding husband, I don't know how I would deal with all of this pain. In spite of the fact that he has his own pain demons to wrangle (at 17, we were in the same car wreck so the theory is that's where all the long term damage comes from), he's always here for me. He takes excellent care of me! He "gets" me. That's so helpful.
The results of my MRIs confirmed what I'd been telling my new doctor - and worse. She just sat there, shaking her head and asked, "How do you even function day-to-day, much less come bouncing in here, always looking so pretty and vibrant?"  Basically, my MRIs showed damage from the top of my cervical spine, through the thoracic spine, lumbar and all the way to my tailbone. Although I have damaged discs in every part of my spine, it's the arthritis that has progressed through the years to close the opening of the spinal column, therefore causing all this intense pain. The doctor reminded me that she treats pain patients all day every day. She said that most of her patients come in looking like hell. Yet, she explained that her treatment decisions are made based on what she sees in the framework - in the MRIs - and mine are one huge mess. She has several plans for making me feel better but it will take time. Also, she's concerned that there is a lot of permanent nerve damage - irreversible and hard to treat in those areas. But she will do all that she can to help ease my pain with all the might that modern pain management science can deliver. The eventual hope is that she can "kill off" the nerve endings that cause most of the foot pain.  But she says that for now, she has much more severe spinal damage to tend to. So, regardless of how much she can accomplish, I know I have a lot to look forward to.
In the meantime, I continue to get all dressed up, get my hair and makeup just right and "bounce around" as my body allows. I accept the things I cannot change, change the things I can and I for pray wisdom to know the difference. Please trust me when I tell you that my serenity prayer has nothing at all to do with alcohol but everything to do with the pain that I've somehow ended up with.
So I must move on to soak in a whirlpool and do whatever else I can to make today easier. But despite the pain, I love my life. I've been so blessed with good things that I consider my pain a small price to pay for all the goodness I have in my life.
So I'll leave you with one parting word. OUCH!