Thomas: I started having pain in my feet during the summer of 2019. At the same time, my back and knees were in a lot of pain. Throughout the fall, the pain worsened. In Latvia at school, I would go outside every day during break and lunch to play soccer. When I would first start running it would hurt for a bit and then go back to "normal." But then after about 20 minutes, my ankles would have shooting pains. Moving and bending them would hurt. I would kind of start limping around. Probably the worst thing about this was when I stopped moving and stood still for more than a few seconds, my ankles would "freeze up." This meant that whatever position my ankles were in, moving them out of it was difficult and painful. The only way to prevent this from happening was to not full on run and move a lot and just to walk around. Or if I had run a lot, I needed to continue moving but slowly bring it down (I never had time to do that though). My parents were very confused when I tried to explain it to them. On weekends they would want to go into the Riga to sight see which led to a lot of walking which was painful for me. When we arrived in Virginia I had had enough. I started playing community soccer and the pain just worsened. Brother Canon in our ward is a feet and ankle specialist and we thought we would meet with him to see what he thought. When we got there he instantly said I had "flat feet" and I needed orthotics. I was a little confused about what the problem was but I went with it. The official name for flat feet is PTTD. I guess my foot arch is not as big as it should be. The flat feet is causing one of my bones that pop out. This is the bone that hurt when anything touched it. A few weeks after that doctor's appointment I got my orthotics. They were very uncomfortable at first and gave my foot rashes. Dr. Canon also talked about a few surgeries that could be done to fix the issue if we wanted, but it would involve me being in a boot for 4 months. I was ready to do anything though to fix the pain forever.
My mom and I did some more research and we decided to get a second opinion, so we went to Dr. Switaj at Ortho Virginia and he told us we should get an MRI of my ankle. The MRI itself was fine, but the position I first put myself in, started to hurt my arm. I was stuck in this position for the MRI to be effective, so I actually started crying, so tears were rolling down my face and I needed to itch too. I squeezed the tube and the doctor asked what was wrong. I told her I was in a lot of pain. She said that if we stopped it we would have to come back and redo it the next week. OH BOY. I had to keep going. Writing about it is making me feel funny. Anyway, I survived and the doctors found out that I have bone bruising and edema in my feet which is probably responsible for my pain. I'm still confused about what all of that means.
The doctor said that I should trade off wearing a boot on each foot every day to keep me from using them too much and to go to physical therapy for 6-8 weeks. It was "fun." We did stretches and stuff with my ankles. As of right now, after 3 weeks, nothing has changed. So there you go, I'm still in pain...but we'll see if I improve in the next month. Because of Covid-19, school was canceled right after the soccer season try outs at the high school and the community soccer teams were canceled too, so I that means that I didn't have to be stressed over making the HS team or that I was missing out playing. Here I am trying to pick, up marbles with my feet and scrunch a towel with my feet. My physical therapists were always very nice.
Here's what is posted all over the community in grocery stores, Doctor's offices, etc.
After one of our appointments in March, they told us that they were transitioning to doing virtual appointments because of Covid. Mom figured that because I had already come for 6 appointments, that maybe I had learned enough exercises to be able to go home and do them on my own. We'll try that for a while and see if we want to do virtual appointments.
0 comments: