Morton's Neuroma

post # 165     I am in total, utter misery right now and I am going to talk about it because i want to, and this is my blog and i don't have to always try to be nice and perky and happy.  I sorta hate to talk about Morton's Neuroma pain because it is not like I have cancer, or lupus, or MS or a brain tumor or a gazillion other serious illnesses but dadgum it hurts like hell!  I have Morton's Neuroma in both feet.  Yep, of all the lotteries in the world, I won this one and got it in both feet.  According to my Dr it is not really a tumor but just a knot of nerves that have grown together and get inflamed and cause pain.  Since it is inside your foot if you do something like say, stand up, it hurts like hell.  I said that, not the Dr.  At best it feels like you have rough shards of rocks in your shoes right at the spot where your toes are attached to your foot.  At the worst, for me so far, it feels like red hot poker lightning bolts zapping through your feet.... continually, for weeks, sometimes months depending on how much time you can spend with your feet propped up, sometimes so intense my toes or entire foot jerks.  On a pain scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the worst it is a 79.  It makes me cry.  It makes it realllly difficult for me to walk or stand sometimes.  It is hard to get much of anything done if you can't stand or walk without excrutiating pain. I developed it probably 10 years ago and there has not been one day that my feet have not hurt, just the degree of pain varies, depending on how inflamed the nerves are.  This seems like a contridiction but it also causes numbness.  My toes are numb except for that burning lightning bolt feeling.  My sweet, sweet daughter gives me a pedicure every now and then and she has purposely poked the tips of my toes with the sharp point of nail scissors to see if i can feel it and I never can.  My Dr said Morton's Neuroma is most often caused by forcing your foot into a narrow pointed high heel shoe not only squeezing your toes together but the high heel forcing all your weight on the ball of your foot.  LOL! I am not a girly girl.  I would like to be and do things like wear high heels but I prefer comfort and can't imagine how women wear those kinds of shoes to work all day...or for several hours at church or anywhere.  Why torture yourself I say so I have never even owned a pair of high heel shoes.  Nope, I got it some other way.  Anyhoo, once you get these nerves inflamed just about the only things you can do are: plan  A. stay off your feet until the inflamation goes down, plan B. have shots of a corticosteriod in the top and bottom of your foot or plan C. have surgery to remove the ball of nerves.  Well, I probably would have opted for plan C and had surgery ...no, I know I would have if it would have guaranteed relief, but my Dr. told me if you are prone to have this condition the truth is the chances of it reforming are high and he would do surgery only as a last resort since it is likely to just come right back. Let's see, have a painful surgery only to have it grow back causing even more pain.  No, I am a tough old bird but I really don't like pain.  I did something like that once when I had a growth removed from the very sensitive area between your nose and lip and it grew back....but i will spare you the details for now.    Plan B...well I tried those shots a couple of times.  Lucky Morton's Neuroma people get to have multiple shots in the top and bottom of your foot at one time.  like I said, I tried that.  As I was laying there flat on my back getting the shots in my foot my ears filled with the tears running from my eyes because those shots hurt so bad.....and if they relieved any pain it must not have been for long. Really, my ears filled with tears.  That needle was long and it hurt.   That leaves plan A as my plan of choice over the years when I just couldn't take the pain any more.  But guess what, when you have a job the powers that be tend to frown on you staying home with your feet propped up while your bundle of nerves un-inflames itself.   Let's just say it takes more than an hour or two.  I have to say, the city for which I worked was very, very good to me in many ways.  At one point I transferred to a branch library and pretty much had to stand for most of my 8 hour shift and they provided really squishy floor mats for me....actually once the branch head found out how truly miserable I was from standing on that concrete floor she ordered 2 mats and we placed one on top of the other at the circulation counter where I worked.  Thank you, Jan!  The mats didn't "cure" me but made it where I could wait until I got home every night to cry and have my daughter massage my feet and bring me extra strength tylenol.  Another thing my Dr told me was that walking barefoot makes the pain even worse.  I hate to wear shoes so this was just the last straw....pain and I had to wear shoes even when I am hanging out at home.  Really, I am living proof that staying off your feet is the only real relief!  The past 17 months since I have been trying to get the depression under control  (and sitting most of the time) have been the most foot-painfree I can remember.  Which brings me to this week.  I love to be outside, if it isn't 104 degrees.  My granddaughter seems to love being outside too.  This week we had wonderful cool weather and I took Taylor on long walks in her stroller.  Often we walk for an hour.  Thursday we went for a walk 3 different times that morning.  Friday it was foggy and cool and so I just bundled her up and we walked for 2 hours.  It was so pleasant! And then Casey, Taylor and I went and walked around Walmart. And then on the way home I stopped and walked around the biggest grocery store in town. Yes, my feet hurt every step of the way, but they hurt if i am walking in the house or outside so I chose to walk outside in the cool air with Taylor.  Well, in hindsight, there is a big difference in walking around the house and setting down for extended periods of time if I want and walking for 2 hours straight on a concrete sidewalk and then another hour or two on store concrete floors.  I have those puppies totally inflamed, just like when I had to work every day. Oh, Lord, please forgive me for I have abused my feet.  I could just cry it hurts so bad and I could just cry because it will probably take weeks of staying off my feet as much as possible for the pain to subside to a dull roar.  For the past year I have been wearing nothing but Sketchers Shape-Ups because the curved bottom keeps alot of the presure off of my neuromas. The only way I could stand to work was by wearing Crocs.  When I get through with this post I am going to order some new crocs and go back to wearing them all the time.   I love this quote from this website  http://www.mortonsneuroma.net/the-symptoms-of-mortons-neuroma   ..."Some studies have show that Morton’s Neuroma may be just as painful as childbirth." AMEN and amen...except they should have added but it doesn't ever stop. And no baby or prize of any kind! Please----Everyone who has given birth without drugs think about that final moment before the last big push and think about being stuck right there feeling that ....what i definitely remember as pain, for years!   I don't know if it is because I was just now reliving 4 childbirths after reading that article or that stupid baseball mascot costume from previous posts has traumatized me but I'm seeing sperm in all the wrong places.  You will not believe this, or maybe it is just me, but when I was searching on the internet today for something to give me some relief I came across these shoes.   I am not promoting these shoes, sure not buying them for $129.95, I just wanted to say.....does that look like a sperm on that shoe to you????? Because that is what it looks like to me and I don't know why on earth a sperm would be on a shoe??? Really, I did not make this up.