Rolling Along

I feel like I'm on a roll. I made my second doctor's appointment yesterday, this one for my poor stupid foot. My appointment is exactly one week from today. Unfortunately my husband won't be able to come due to work, but on the plus side my mother has agreed to come with in his stead. Which is good, because I don't know how ready I am to face a foot doctor on my own. 

A few random foot related thoughts...

• I always found it funny that the doctor who delivered me was Dr. Cripp. Cripp...cripple. Okay maybe I have a slightly twisted sense of humor that skews toward irony.
• My mother had no clue that I had a club foot til I was born. She tells this heartbreaking story of when they finally handed me over and seeing my foot for the first time.
• Even though doctors are pretty much on a consensus that clubfoot is genetic, there is no one else in my traceable family line that has the defect.
• My mother is convinced that two things happened : 1. that she almost lost me early on in the pregnancy  and 2. that my bad foot was 'stuck' under her ribcage for the majority of the pregnancy. According to her it was a constant pressure and pain and that you could even feel something solid there.
• The doctors thought they could fix my foot with the Ponseti method, which includes a series of castings, stretchings, and massage. It didn't work and I had surgery before the age of 1.
• I learned to walk with a cast on.
• My family tells another story about how I didn't cry as a baby. I simply stuck my casted leg out through the slats of the crib and pounded it on the wall until someone came.
• I had arthritis by the age of ten
• One summer I spent my vacation trying to bulk up the bad leg in hopes it would take care of some of my pain. I stepped up onto a stump, kicked trees, rode bicycles, and skipped rope. It didn't really help.
• I didn't own my first pair of regular sneakers until a year ago. Until then I always wore boots, for the ankle support.
• I can not wear heels...period. Even though I not so secretly long to.
• At one time you could visibly see the misalignment of my knees, hips, and even my rib cage. Most of which has all but evened out as time has went by.
• When I was younger my hip used to pop out of place randomly for a few seconds. It was incredibly painful but brief.
• The last time I saw a doctor for my foot I was a freshman in high school. Gym was a requirement and most days I had to have help from friends to reach the school bus after glass. I saw the doctor who did my original surgery. He was pleased with how things had turned out and didn't recommend further treatment and wrote me a note to get out of gym. Which was so worth the dr.s visit.
• That summer one of our horses stepped on my foot. It didn't hurt much at first and I was planning on limping it off....til I looked down that is. I almost went into shock. In the maybe half a minute I tried to ignore it a peach sized lump had grown on the top of my foot. Everything started to go black and I almost fainted. That was until my mom hit me like a linebacker, then I was back to awareness if not more than a little nauseous. We didn't go to the doctor then. I regret that now. Two months later it still hurt and I spent my entire summer pretty well laid up. The weight of water in the swimming pool even hurt.
• Before I started working this new job, my foot was the best it had ever been. I could do fancy yoga poses on it, I was developing a wonderful sense of balance and strength, I was even working on the ability to stand on my tip-toes. Sadly that's all lost now.
• And finally, when I first joined The Bump I remember posting about how I was afraid to postpone having children any longer due to the worry of not being able to run and play with them, or falling while holding them. The ladies (and GM,lol) pretty well reamed me and told me I was vastly over-reacting. Though I wasn't certain then, I am now that they were wrong and my condition is serious and it's progression is definitely a factor in my future whether as a parent or just an active woman.  The next time something like that happens I'll remind myself that they don't live my life and don't understand the problems associated with my condition anymore than they know what its like to be a unicorn, and that I should never feel silly for taking my health seriously.