A Year and a Half of Foot Drama (Or, How to Take the Long Road to Health)

This isn’t the blog post that I thought I’d be sharing today. Here's why:

Last weekend, I ran in the women’s race 5K. I ran the fastest time I ever have for a 5K. Now you are probably thinking, “Um, what?!” on a couple of different levels with that statement…

As many of you know, I was originally scheduled to run in the half marathon. So, you are probably wondering why in the hell I didn’t run the half marathon, especially since I was training for it (I got up to 8 miles before having to stop.) Moreover, I’m clearly doing something right if I ran my fastest 5K, right?

Short answer to this question? My skeletal structure has been off for many years, and it took a broken foot and a year and a half of additional drama to figure out what was going on with it. I’m now running with proper running form, which is why I had my fastest time ever. However, I haven’t had the time to rebuild up the atrophied muscles to a state where they could sustain a half-marathon.

Long answer to this question? Get ready for a year and a half of drama. Now, I know that this tale is long. And honestly, I could care less whether you read every word, if you skim the rest, or if you stop right now. Your choice. The rest of this blog post- I’m writing all of this for ME and for no one else. This long tale isn’t your typical tale about “hard work = success,” or a moral lesson about how extreme measures can result in unprecedented achievements. Nope, this is NOT that blog post. This is a blog post about how our bodies can mirror our personal issues and circumstances. This is a blog post about learning how to revise expectations and adapt. It’s about learning patience, perseverance, and trust.

Before I even broke my foot last May, I was having issues. During March of 2016, I actually was having a lot of problems with running. My feet would go numb within a mile after starting to run, and my calves and legs felt soooo tired when I ran. It’s really hard to describe and explain because I was in great shape when this was happening. I could climb up 20 feet of silks, I could do the splits again, and I could dance without breaking a sweat. So my cardio, strength, and flexibility were great. I had no idea why my feet were going numb and why it suddenly became sooooo difficult for me to run 4 miles. I felt really confused and scared.

Eventually, I had no choice but to seek help. I went to one chiropractor, but she wasn’t the best fit for me.  She did figure out that my calves were extraordinarily tight, and that it was this tightness that was causing the numbness in my feet and the extreme difficulty with running. However, she had no idea why my calves would become so ridiculously tight. She had me stretching them constantly…scraping the fascia off the muscles…etc. all to try and loosen them up. My calves would get loosened up a bit, but it didn’t take long before they would tighten right back up.

I had to take time off from running for awhile at the advice of this first chiropractor. I felt so sad because I had to miss our hospice’s annual 5K run, and I loved participating in the race with my coworkers. Moreover, I always speak at that event, so it felt stupid that I was speaking at it when I couldn’t run it. (Little did I know at that time that I was soon going to be taking a LONG time off running.)

Eventually, my chiro had me try running again after we worked on my calves for several weeks. And so I went for my first couple of runs that week. And it felt a bit better than before… but it still didn’t feel right. And this is literally how it happened- in such a serendipitous way. I was going on my second run attempt at Gray’s Lake, and just as I finished one lap around the lake, I thought to myself, “Maybe this is as good as it’s going to get. Maybe this is just how running is going to be for me for the rest of my life. Maybe it won’t ever feel great again.” And within 5 seconds after that thought and feeling of resignation, I stepped on the infamous twig, felt my body lurch sideways, caught all of my weight on the side of my foot, and I cracked the piss out of my 5^th metatarsal.

At first I was in significant denial when it happened. My foot hurt like a son of a gun, but I thought that I could walk it off. I mean, I had never broken a bone before, so I didn’t think that anything could actually go wrong. I actually thought at the time that I could walk it off, and then I could run another lap at Gray’s Lake. (LOL…Seriously, Anne?!?!) Well, that obviously didn’t work out. My foot was screaming in piercing pain, so I eventually hobbled to my car and drove myself home. I figured I would rest it one day, and then I would be fine by tomorrow. Again, I had never even sprained or twisted anything on my body before, so it was incomprehensible that anything “bad” really could have actually happened.

Do you notice anything different?!?!

When I got home, I iced the hell out of my foot (believe it or not, I’m actually quite proud that I had the wherewithal to know to do that. I’m telling you- I don’t injure myself hardly ever, so this whole phenomenon was quite novel to me.) It still swelled and ballooned no matter what I did. My family told me to go to the Urgent Clinic, but the clinic told me that they weren’t taking X-Rays due to the fact that it was Memorial Day. They told me to wrap it and come back the next day.

This became one of the most pathetic (but hilarious in hindsight) nights of my life. I couldn’t put any weight on my foot, and I live alone. So what did I do? I got out my volleyball knee pads, and I crawled around on my hands and knees so I could get around my apartment. It was a weird hybrid between brilliant and pathetic. I ended up having to take a sedative to sleep that night because the pain in my foot was so crippling that I could hardly think about anything else.

The next day, I woke up and immediately went to the urgent clinic. They took the X-Rays, and it was very clear I had busted my 5^th metatarsal. I got crutches and a scooter to help me get around until I could walk with just a walking boot. Suddenly, the fact that my feet would go numb when I ran- that became a moot point. I clearly wasn’t going to be running for a long time.

To speak plainly- it really freakin’ SUCKED to have a broken foot. Now, I know that everyone laughed and made fun of me for being so dramatic about it (and yes, I know that I was dramatic.) However, you also need to understand that so much of what makes me ANNE and so much of what gives me meaning and joy- it comes from my ability to be active. For example, most of my social engagements are built on some sort of activity- weekly volleyball, TGR classes, walks, swimming, boating, etc. are all centered around being able to be physically active and social with others. Additionally, being active is also how I cope with stress. I DO have a stressful job that requires me to listen to people’s pain and tears all day long. The way that I let go of that heaviness is to be physically active and not have to think about what sad stories I heard that day.

Everything changed with a broken foot. I felt so lonely because I didn’t have my normal social engagements with people. I felt more stressed out because I didn’t have the release from activities. I gained weight because I burned 90% fewer calories than I had previously. And I would get tired so much easier. I felt like I didn’t even knew myself- who the hell was this person that moved so slow, was depressed, and got tired so easily? It wasn’t Anne…the person that is full of energy and endurance. The loss of a sense of self; that loss is always one of the most difficult that we humans experience.

Remember my nasty, smelly boot!?

I tried to console myself. Okay, most broken bones take 6 weeks to heal, or 8 weeks, max. Yes, it sucked, but I would still be healed by August, and then I would still be able to enjoy part of summer. Is anyone catching a theme, here? That basically my expectations and desires were continually dashed, and I would have to confront a different reality? Well, this is a life lesson that I needed to learn in many aspects of my life, and I was forced to learn this lesson OVER, and OVER, again with my foot. It turns out that I broke one of the slowest healing bones of the body because it doesn’t receive very much blood flow. And apparently, with my body, it was even slower than most. It was NOT healed in 6-8 weeks like most breaks. My only “treat” was that finally at 12 weeks, I was allowed to wear tennis shoes instead of my nasty ass walking boot. I was far from healed, but at least I didn’t have to endure the annoyance and stench of a walking boot. So there I was- wearing tennis shoes to my professional job every day. I would wear my beloved summer skirts, and then polish off the look with ratty tennis shoes. Oy ve.

At 18 weeks, I went in for YET another X-Ray. I thought surely by now I would be healed. So, I go in for the X-Ray, the doctor comes in to talk to me, and he says that my foot is fully healed! He can’t even SEE where the break originally happened! As soon as I left the doctor’s office, I started texting everyone I knew the wonderful news. Moreover, I decided to go shopping for new shoes to celebrate. I had just picked out a pair of new shoes when my cell phone rang. It was my doctor, and he informed me that there had been a mix-up with my X-Rays that morning. My foot was still indeed cracked, and I was NOT healed. I literally wanted to cry or throw something in the store. But I didn’t, and I tried to see the humor in the situation. Of COURSE my X-Rays had been mixed up. Everything else had been a clusterfuck this past year, so why wouldn’t my X-Rays be confused? The only good news is that the doctor said I could start wearing regular shoes again, so I would at least look like a professional adult once more.

Finally, at 23 weeks, I went in for an appointment, and I was pronounced fully healed. The drama of the broken foot had started on May 30^th, 2016, and I was finally healed from it over 5 months later on November 7^th, 2016. Again, while I know that I’m dramatic, please keep in mind that most breaks heal within 6-8 weeks. TWELVE if the break is a bit stubborn. I apparently was going for some sort of world record with TWENTY-FREAKING-THREE. And please, don’t give me statements about “it could have been worse.” I work in hospice full time, so I’m perfectly aware of JUST how bad someone’s health can be. Let’s just stick with my personal situation that it was 23 weeks of hell, mmm’kay?

I started running again after the doctor gave me the clear. I felt very nervous about doing it- I still remembered how my feet had gone numb before the foot break, and I also simply hadn’t run in a long time. I started slow, but running felt fine. I smiled as I ran, and I remember thinking to myself, “I’m B\back!”

I felt so joyous at returning to running that I increased my distances without thinking too much about it. One day, I ran 7 miles, and I did it while running just under 10 minute miles. I decided on a whim that I would run another half marathon. I felt so strong and empowered. I had endured the world’s longest break, and now I was running great again. I had also increased my strength even more while my foot was broken (since lifting was the primary way I could work out), and I just felt like I was made from titanium. I eagerly signed up for the women’s half marathon, a race that was specifically designed to celebrate women’s power.

Well, again, life has…funny timing. It vaguely crossed my mind as I was increasing my distance that I had never really resolved the initial “my feet would go numb” running issue. It had been put on the back burner with the world’s longest foot break. However, I kept telling myself that maybe my calves just needed a break, and that they received one with my broken foot. They needed a break, they straightened themselves out, and it would be fine.

Well, no, it wasn’t. Most issues don’t magically go away; you really have to address the root cause. I knew this, but I didn’t want to have to deal with it yet again. I had already gone through so much with my feet and health that I couldn’t face the idea that there were more hurdles to cross. So I kept running.

Well, low and behold, I had just gotten up to running 8 miles when the same phenomenon started happening. My feet would go numb when I would run, my calves were tight, and my running times started to slow down as the tightness and numbness increased. It sucked- it felt very much like some sort of Greek tragedy where the very thing you try to avoid ends up coming to haunt you.

And so…the search for answers and assistance began again. I tried a physical therapist this time, but she was absolutely zero help. She kept trying to tell me that I wasn’t stretching my hip flexors enough, and I kept telling her that I could do the damn splits, and I knew how to stretch my hip flexors. Finally, out of desperation, I went to go see a massage therapist that I googled on a whim. At the very least, perhaps this person could provide some relief for my ridiculously tight calves. It only took him a half hour for him to immediately spot the problem. So simple…and yet…so incredibly detrimental.

The problem that had been happening this whole time is that I stand, walk, and run on the outside of my feet. I had probably been doing this for many, many years (hell, who knows if I have ever walked correctly), and it finally had caused enough damage to my muscles and skeletal system that I was feeling the tightness in my calves and numbness in my feet. Holy cow. As I listened to the massage therapist, it was like a freakin’ light bulb went off in my head. I had never realized it, but I DID walk on the outside of my feet. I was literally doing everything along the very outside of my foot; picture a line straight down from your pinkie toe to the outside of your heel. THAT’S where my weight was being placed, which is NOT where it is supposed to be.

The therapist massaged my calf muscles and put them back into place, but he told me I ultimately needed to see a chiropractor because my ankles and the rest of my joints were probably out of place. Well, I wasn’t going back to my original chiropractor; that did not work out the first time. I talked to Dissident Daughter Amy, and she informed me that her chiropractor was a miracle worker. I took her advice, and I went to go see him.

This chiropractor took x-rays and scans of my whole body. And what I saw HORRIFIED me. I’m definitely not an anatomy or biology major, but even I can see when bones are uneven and out of place. My skeletal system was all jacked up. One of my hips was one inch higher than the other, and my knees and ankles were not lined up. No wonder I was walking on the outside of my feet and everything was all screwed up! The chiropractor didn’t know how long my system had been like this, but he suspected that something had happened when I was a child and that it had obviously grown worse with each passing year. If I wanted to fix it, I was going to need to come in for several, several appointments during the first couple of months of care before being able to back off to a maintenance schedule of once a month.

Now, here’s the other issue. I don’t have great chiropractor insurance. I have AMAZING health insurance overall (because I work for a health system), but because our organization doesn’t really have any chiropractors within our system, I really don’t have much by way of insurance for chiropractic care. The chiropractor was going to do what he could to discount the visit price so that I was only paying $30 per visit (which is actually pretty damn good without insurance.) However, I was going to need to come in three times a week for over two months. Obviously, that was going to add up very quickly.

Now, some of you might be shaking your head right now. Some people don’t trust chiropractors or they don’t think that coming in that often would be necessary. But you have to understand a couple of things. First, if you saw my x-rays, you might understand why I needed so many frequent appointments during my first couple of months of care. Second, I make most of the big decisions in my life based on my intuition, and this strategy has NEVER failed me. My intuition told me that I needed to do this and it was the right decision (money be damned.) I had a feeling that this chiropractor could really help me, and I also knew that I didn’t want to screw around with my health. I’ve seen enough people struggle with chronic back pain to know that I didn’t want to be one of them; I would rather treat and prevent the issue while I was in my 30’s than pay for it with ongoing pain and issues in my 50’s.

So, when the total amount came to $1200 for two months of care, I slammed down my credit card and told them to charge it. I HAD to do it.

And again…God often takes care of us during phases when we need to grow and challenge ourselves. As luck would have it, just when I found out that I was going to need to pay all of that money for the chiropractor, I stumbled across some extra revenue. I do PRN shifts as a chaplain at the hospital occasionally. Well, it just so happened that one of their residents suddenly quit, and they were short staffed. They would be willing to pay me to do an extra on-call shift every week for two months. I would be able to earn an extra $1600 because of this. While it would have been nice to put that money toward student loans or savings, I really think that God helped influence events so that I could pay for this chiropractic care at the right time in my life. Because of the extra shifts at the hospital, I would be able to pay off my chiropractic care without going into debt. It was amazing.

So, I start going to this chiropractor. He had me take off running for two weeks while we started working on getting my body back into place. And within a couple of weeks, I already felt a HUGE difference. All of the sudden…I’m walking completely different. I can’t tell you how bizarre it felt to start walking with completely new form. I was hyperaware of it all the time; I wanted to make sure that I was not repeating the same error of walking on the outside of my feet. It felt so strange to have to relearn something that I had been doing naturally since I was two years old. Every step I took I would make sure to think to myself “proper form, proper form.” It felt completely strange and different, but RIGHT.

Finally, after 2 weeks, I was given the green light to run again. I was so excited- I thought that THIS time was really it. I had everything in place, so now I could FINALLY run! It would feel great, I would go fast…it would be awesome. The nightmare that I had been through with the past year- it was FINALLY, FINALLY, over. For realz. And so I went for my first run after seeing this chiropractor.

…I ran almost a 1 mile before I wanted to die. I had no idea what was going on, except I felt as though someone had implanted bamboo shoots in my lower legs. There is no other way to describe it. It was literally as though I was suddenly running with bamboo implants. I could tell that it wasn’t an injury type of pain. It was more like my muscles were screaming in agony….like they just couldn’t get enough oxygen or blood. I could NOT figure out what was going on. Only a couple of weeks ago, I had run 8 miles. I couldn’t have deteriorated this quickly. Moreover, the chiropractor had adjusted me to correct form?! What.the.****. I cursed everything.

I went into the chiropractor nearly in tears the next day. Here I was, thinking that I was going to be all better (or at least improved), and suddenly, I couldn’t even run a mile anymore. I mean, at least when I was running on the outside of my feet (BAD form!) I could still run at a distance. My feet may have been numb and I may have been slow, but at least I could freakin’ do it. Now, suddenly, with all of the work I had done adjusting myself, I couldn’t even run a mile. How was that possible? I was still in shape. I felt so stupid and bad about myself.

Well, it turns out that since everything was getting back into alignment, I was running with completely different form. As I had realized. The problem, however, is that this new running form was completely different than how I had been running before. It was the correct form, but it meant that I was using muscles that hadn’t been used in…..many years (if ever at all!) These muscles were incredibly, incredibly weak. This would happen to anyone that made the shift, but the difference was even more pronounced for me because I’m pretty muscular and dense. I looked at the research, and when this has happened to other people, they recommend starting off running only very, very short distances. Like a half mile. And then increasing your distance and speed by only 10% every week.

I about crapped my pants when I read all this research. On the one hand, it was comforting because other people described the same symptoms as me (calves on fire, so sore the next day they could hardly walk.) So I wasn’t an anomaly. However, if I could only increase my speed and distance by 10%....I would never be ready for the half marathon at the beginning of May.

I felt really sad when I realized this. And…if I’m honest…I also felt embarrassed. I felt embarrassed that I had told everyone that I was running a half marathon, and now, I was going to have to tell them that I wasn’t. And I felt embarrassed that my whole ordeal with my feet had lasted like a year and a half. So much time and money spent trying to figure out what was going on…it was like there was a constant new chapter in the saga. Moreover, there was a part of me that kept thinking that maybe if I pushed myself a bit harder, I would be ready in time.

But you see….this is the EXACT lesson that I needed to learn. I didn’t need to learn the lesson of “working hard results in payoff.” I’ve already learned that lesson in my life. I didn’t need to learn the lesson of “taking extreme measures to achieve success.” Again, I’ve lived and embraced that life lesson years ago

No, the lesson that I needed to learn this past 1.5 years is one of patience, perseverance, and trust. Patience: At every turn this past 1.5 years, I had expectations about how everything should turn out and on what timeline it should happen. And at every turn…I was thwarted. I had to learn to be patient. Perseverance: This is different than just simply “working hard.” To persevere meant to keep trying. And this looked different at every turn. Sometimes, perseverance meant taking some time off from running. Other times, it meant trying a different chiropractor. And still other times, it meant putting one foot in front of the other, retraining my bones and muscles to run with the proper form. It didn’t mean that I pushed myself to run 13 miles when I wasn’t ready. There was discernment and the ever-needed patience in my perseverance to know how and when to push. And, I had to learn trust. I was anxious about this issue a LOT the last 1.5 years. (Who me, anxious?) I thought I would never be able to run normal again. I really thought that running had just become a painful, difficult exercise for me, and that it would never fill me with joy or pride again. I had to learn to trust that somehow, someway- I would find my way back again.

This is such a sexy picture. Not.
But I'm RUNNING!!!

These are the exact lessons that I needed to learn in my life the past 1.5 years. Not only in my body, but it mirrored some of the other events and circumstances occurring in other areas of my life. You can’t force certain things to happen in your life, no matter how much you want them. But if you slow down, address root issues, trust yourself, and grow slowly- then life tends to grow in positive, healthy, and sustainable ways. You have to trust yourself, and you have to trust that God and your community will help you along the way. My body was telling me this, and my heart told me the same message as well. It took a lot of drama for me to finally listen to what everything in the world was telling me.

I’ve continued persevering. I’ve since watched several YouTube videos on proper running form, I’ve concentrated on correcting my foot strike, and I’ve slowly built up speed and distance. I’m finally back up to running 5 miles, and I can do it at about a 9:30 pace if I push myself. And, like I said, I ran my fastest 5K a week ago. I'm fairly confident that I can say that I'm finally, for real, on the right track. 

I still have more that I need to do. I can feel that my once atrophied muscles aren’t as strong as the rest of my body, and this means that I am still limited with my distance and speed. But the good news is that I’m on the right track, and I am growing in a positive and healthy way. I’ll get there eventually. Maybe I’ll run a half marathon this fall, maybe it will be next spring, or maybe I won’t do it for a couple of years. Honestly, I’m not really that concerned about making that decision. I’m simply excited to be running with joy again, and I’ve learned the lessons I need to learn.