Rebuilding My Relationship with My Foot

Emily A Daniels
3 min readJun 11, 2021

Some of my first memories are memories around my right foot. I have nothing concrete that I remember; going to a special shoe store and sitting in a special chair to get my shoes fitted, wearing my shoes on the wrong-feet for a while (that part could have been my dyslexia or wishful thinking), going to a doctor that told me I shouldn’t do ballet because of something to do with my feet. I don’t know. My right foot has just always been a thing; but for a while, there was a sweet-spot between college and my mid-thirties, it seemed totally fine. So fine, in fact, that I forgot it was a thing I had to be thinking about.

There are two types of people in this world; runners and non-runners. How do you know which camp someone falls into? If you’ve known them for more than 15–30 minutes and you don’t know, its because they aren’t a runner. A runner will identify themselves early and often(and I can say that because I am one).

Anyways, what happens when a human with a bad foot runs on it for 25 years? Damage. A. Lot. Of. Damage. Enough damage that when the inevitable foot surgery comes, it is a full foot and ankle reconstruction.

We runners have a really weird relationship to our feet. We love our feet, we are grateful for our feet but most of all; we honor and respect our feet. Our legs get tired, they want to stop; our brains get tired, we want to give up; but our feet? They just keep going. Don’t get me wrong; they hurt and would much rather be laying in bed, but they endure. They keep going. The legs are the powerhouses, don’t get me wrong, but the feet are like the Energizer Bunny. (Because I don’t know how dated this may make me so I will explain just in case: they keep going and going and going…)

Whenever someone would ask (usually a therapist because I can’t think of anyone else that actually ask this) what part of my body felt safe, 100% of the time I would answer that it was my feet. They could carry me wherever I needed to go, whenever I needed to go. They could constantly carry me to safety.

Seven months ago, I had my foot and ankle reconstruction done. As one of the surgeons told me in a follow-up visit, “We did A LOT of surgery on your foot”. It was a lot of surgery, and its been a lot of recovery. I had been told that I should be in a shoe by the 4–5 month mark, I haven’t been in one yet (the only exception is Crocs) seven months out, and don’t really plan to be for the foreseeable future.

The structures within my foot have healed well and all look really great, which is amazing news. Really it is. The problem I’m facing now, is nerve pain. There was some damage done to one of the nerves in my leg, which is causing unbelievable pain down the side of my foot. The outside of my foot somehow feels like fire but is completely numb at the same time. To those of you who feel like that is impossible, I salute you as someone who has never struggled with pain of the nerve type. Even as someone who struggles with it daily I will still say that it doesn’t seem like that could be possible. To which I will also say, oh, but it is. It doesn’t seem theoretically possible, but it is.

My relationship with that foot is strained. We have lost a lot of trust we had with each other. I’m a big intention-setter. One of my major intentions for my post-surgical time was to repair the trust that was lost in the pre-surgical time. Little did I know, the harm to both sides of the relationship done was only to begin. Now is the time that this relationship start some healing.

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