Friday, June 08, 2007

Ouch - Plantars and I'm Not Talking Peanuts

Well, poop. The last couple of days I’ve had a few instances of a sharp pain in the arch of my left foot. I couldn’t understand what I’d done when the pain occurred. I was just walking along, minding my own business and, ziiipppp! Yowee. I stopped and a few salty words later cautiously began to go about my business again. There was a slight residual pain, but I didn’t think I was going to get zapped again.

This morning I woke up and the sucker hurts. So, seeing as how this has already happened to me once in my life I know what it is. This is Plantar Fasciitis. The tendon at the bottom of your foot separates. Ouch. It takes a year to heal up. That or one big sucker of a cortisone shot.

As I made coffee I reached into the very back of the freezer for the lemonade containers that we refilled with water and froze once they were empty. You put your hurt foot on that and roll it back and forth. Most of the water in both of the containers we had in reserve had evaporated, so after I was done I refilled them both up and set them to freeze again.

My husband had this problem too once. When I told him this morning what was going on he said, “Oh, that sucks.” I surely hope this eases up and goes away quickly. Man, I don’t want this lasting a year like the last episode did.

There are a few more exercises you can do. Like you can sit on the floor and loop a towel (I was thinking about using the sash from DeeDude’s bathrobe) over the arch of your foot and slowly pull for the count of 15 to 30 seconds.

Also, you can stand on a step on the balls of your feet and let your heel drop. Hold onto the railing or the wall for balance.

You can lean into a wall, move the injured foot back and the other leg forward and feel the stretch in the calf of your leg.

Ouch. You can see where I found this picture and these exercises at a Plantar Fasciitis Info Site.

1 comment:

RisibleGirl said...

I'm not a doctor (just played one on the Internet!), but this has been a problem on and off for me as well. One of my girlfriends told me that her doctor recommended wearing a bit of a heel and it worked for her. I tried it and mine has gone away too.

Well, that combined with not excercising barefoot anymore! :)