Mundane ailments

This is just a quickie, as I'm very busy this week... and also doing NaNoWriMo.

I've been having some trouble with my feet lately. The residual pain from the toe-stubbing incident is now gone, but it took about two months to disappear completely, and in the meantime I've been walking rather than running, and finding that my feet really hurt after a longish walk - more than I would expect them to, and it still seems to happen no matter how sensible and supportive my shoes. And they also hurt when I get out of bed in the morning: it feels as though all the bones have decompressed overnight, and it hurts to compress them again!

None of which is great news for exercising, especially as I really want to get back into running now. A few days ago, I idly looked around on Wikipedia and came to the conclusion that I might have flat feet. It probably would have taken me ages to get around to going to the doctor, except that I managed to do something weird to my big toe. I thought it was probably just a muscle strain, but it was so painful it actually kept me awake on Wednesday night, so I thought I might as well get it looked at and ask about my feet in general.

Conclusion: yup, muscular strain, take ibuprofen and wait for it to get better - but I do have flat feet. So the doctor's referring me to get them looked at, and I'll probably get orthotics (surgery is possible, but unlikely). I'm also to get an orthopaedic check-up, since I'm hypermobile, which increases the likelihood of joint problems as a knock-on effect. Both my siblings have had these, but I've been lucky so far.

Actually, the flat-feet thing shouldn't have taken me this long to work out, because my brother's got them too, and my feet have always been slightly ache-prone, especially when I've been walking a lot. I can see that my arches are pretty low, and I've always had trouble with new trainers not being comfortable - it always feels as though the arch-support is too high. I tend to get blisters in the inner arch, too (and I get more blisters than the average person, anyway).

One sign is a tendency for your shoes to wear down more on the outer edge, and mine certainly do that!

I'm hoping that once I have the orthotics, I will no longer be held back in my running by my feet hurting. That's definitely been the case - they'd blister or hurt long before I was physically exhausted - and I'm kind of kicking myself that I just put it down to not being fit enough yet. Which I mostly did.

I was slightly afraid that the doctor was going to say "Well, your feet wouldn't hurt if you weren't overweight, so nyah." But of course he didn't (and, you know, my feet weren't this hurt-prone when I was heavier - it doesn't seem to be directly connected).

Talking of weight: still at 184 as of this Monday.