The Not-So-Golden
Arches
And whether one member
suffer,
all the members suffer
with it;
or one member be
honoured,
all the members rejoice
with it.
— 1 Corinthians 12:26
Shoe salesmen always told me that the
arches of my feet were high. I foolishly thought it was a compliment. Of COURSE
my arches were high! The highest in my SCHOOL! In my CITY! On EARTH!
They'd look at me funny, but I
didn't know why. Now, I do. That wasn't a compliment. Suddenly, the arch of my
right foot collapsed like a $2 suitcase in a pounding rainstorm. And now it
hurts like a son of a gun to walk.
It was triage: high arches, a dorky
bunion, and ancient walking shoes that didn't give my feet anywhere near enough
support for all the walking I've been doing. Why didn't I change my shoes every
three months like you're supposed to, instead of every three decades? Because
I'm cheap. Now, I pay.
Who knew the humble human foot has
soooooo many moving parts, and if ONE of them gets out of whack, ALL of them
do?
Who knew that soreness in a little
spot the size of a dime on the bottom of my foot, sight unseen, could command
my undivided attention, consume my every waking moment, and make me walk like a
gimp?
But then I realized: isn't it the
same way with everything in life? One "sore" person in a company can screw
everything up. One person who's a pain can destroy a sports team or a church
group. What's the answer? Everyone needs support and attention BEFORE things
come crashing down.
Now I'm toast. They say for therapy
you should put a can of beans in the freezer, take it out, and roll it around
with your bare foot. But that just doesn't square with my glamorous lifestyle.
I mean, what if someone comes OVER? Are they doing this on Cape COD? And aren't
beans just SO last season?
What really hurt was that I've lost
20 pounds recently through dieting and lots of walking. While I'm not to my
goal yet, my avoirdupois is more "du"-able. But Gray's Anatomy (the book, not the TV show), tactfully put the cause
of a fallen arch this way: ". . . it is more liable to yield in those who are
overweighted." (p. 185)
OUCH!
It also hurt when a wise friend
about my age shrugged, smiled, and said, "We just have too many miles on us."
DOUBLE OUCH!!!
And it hurt to imagine myself in a
gorgeous mother-of-the-bride dress at the four future weddings of our four
lovely daughters, with this newspaper account: "The bride wore white; her
mother wore thick-soled orthopedic shoes."
FLAT-FOOT FLOOGIE WITH A FLOY FLOY
OUCH! (with apologies to Fats Waller)
I had to fight back. So I got a
snazzy pair of Nikes. They're like a fine automobile: "shocks" at the back and "airbags"
under the balls of the feet. Helped some. But it STILL hurt like a grandson of
a gun to walk.
So I limped over to the Foot Fix-Up
Shop and took a walk on the wild side on some carbon paper. The print should've
been evenly colored. The fact that it looks like a Dalmatian shows the excess
pressure I'm putting in the wrong places, altering my gait. Left untreated, it could
lead to ankle, knee and hip pain:
Confronted with the evidence and
emboldened by the diagnosis - metatarsalgia, which sounds serious enough to be
a sexually-transmitted disease, only lower -- I forked over $370 for what I am
calling "implants." Why? Because that sounds snazzy. Isn't EVERYONE getting
them?
They're actually orthotic "inserts"
- hard, sloping, plastic arch supports which slip into my shoes.
Now it only hurts like a great-grandson
of a gun to walk. So that's progress.
And there are silver linings to my
not-so-golden arches. For one thing, my newly flat foot will keep me out of the
Army. For another, a fellow sufferer informed me that as we get older, the
balls of our feet get THINNER, and that's why we have trouble.
Heyyyyy! I may be a little pudgy
around the middle - but ask me about my skinny metatarsus. †
