The osteopath gets her hands on my feet

The last time I went to see my osteopath, Jane Kaushal of Hands On Health, she seemed rather keen to get her hands on my feet!

I felt too nervous last time, but in the last fortnight my feet seem to have improved a lot so I thought that yesterday I'd allow her to have a go at them.

Because the orthotics woman had really hurt my left foot (see this post for details) Jane decided just to look at my right foot.

She massaged the arch of the foot, or more specifically, the plantar fascia muscle that runs under the foot. I know that muscle is really tight as just pressing on it with my finger is painful, so it was good to have her expert hands on it.

She spent a few minutes on it at the end of my usual session, so it was only a quick massage, but it made a big difference - my feet felt really different afterwards.

Encouragingly, Jane said she felt that my midfoot was much more flexible than she had expected. I'm hoping this is because I've been doing my exercises and looking after my feet, but it may simply be because I am highly flexible.

The midfoot is the blue section in this picture. The grey section is the bit of the foot up to where the toes start, which I guess is called the forefoot, and the white bit is is the toes. I assume medical people also call those toes, lol. (You can read about foot anatomy here.)




I have borrowed this picture from this website. If you click on the link, you may notice, as I did, that the foot used in the video on the page has a bunion! They are EVERYWHERE and I plan to do a post on that at some point as the more I look at feet in magazines and images, the more I see bunions.

But I digress.

So, Jane was generally happy with how my feet are recovering, which is great to hear as I really respect and value her opinion. I also plan to let her loose on my feet again, and hopefully both of them, as it made a big difference to my right foot and I think will help speed my recovery.

So far, my recommendations for good recovery are:

Decent trainers (*sad face*)

Toe spacers

Exercises (see here and here)

Physiotherapy

Osteopathy

Plenty of rest for the first weeks/months

Gentle mobilisation when you are ready

And most important - LISTEN TO YOUR BODY and do what it tells you. Don't push it too far.

One final point. Jane felt it was important for me to spend some time without the spacers in. I do already take them out at night (keep meaning to post about that) but now I'm going to incorporate some spacer-free time in the day too, and walk around without them. Jane said it would help with the muscle mobility, which may be hindered by using the spacers all day. (Jane, if you're reading and I've not explained that very well, feel free to email me a better explanation I can post on here.)

Frustrated and achy at 9 weeks 6 days

Sorry for being a bit AWOL recently. I usually aim to write something every four days max, but I've been a bit busy and a bit miserable and so after posting my videos over a week ago I've been MIA.

I'm feeling quite down about my feet right now. Some of it is not really to do with my feet. Partly it's because it's winter and I get a bit of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) which you can read about here. I have had depression on and off since I was 13, and although I've been free of its worst ravages for a few years now, I do find winter a VERY hard time.

It's also partly because had I not lost my last pregnancy, I would have been a new mum with a two-week-old right now, and that is obviously a really difficult milestone to face. Especially as I have lost five babies in pregnancy, to first-trimester miscarriages caused by my Factor V Leiden, which you can read about in older posts here.

So it's been a tough time.

Add to that the fact that my feet ache all the time, and I often get some sharp throbbing along the incision sites, and you can see why posting hasn't been my top priority.

But I have promised this would be a no-holds-barred account, and so it's only right that I explain my absence.

Over the last week and a bit, my feet have definitely entered a new phase of recovery. Sadly, it's a really difficult and frustrating stage that brings with it new aches and pains.

I've gone from my feet being mostly OK, to them hurting pretty much all the time. In the main it's a dull ache in the big toes, and under the foot in the arch, as well as generally in the soles.

If you have a read of what makes up the arches of the feet, it's easy to see why this is happening.

My feet have been totally reshaped by the bunion removal. Bone has been cut, shaved and moved, tendons have been moved and adjusted, and now my entire leg needs to work in a new way, which puts strains on pretty much all the muscles in the legs and feet.

So my hips ache, my knees ache and click (because they always have clicked at times, it probably wont happen to you!), and my feet hurt as well.

Seriously, I'm trying to be upbeat but I am struggling because I feel so miserable!

I have managed to see my osteopath. Last weekend I had my first appointment with her since the surgery, and it was great!

She was amazed at the new shape of my feet, and also at how tight my entire body is! Clearly, all this inactivity and new ways of using my body have taken their toll - my back was so tight she couldn't finish it off in the session, and my head and jaw muscles (the reason I go to her in the first place) were so bad I need another session really soon.

But she was quite keen to get her hands on my feet! I said no because the thought of it made me go cold, but since then I've been thinking how nice a good massage that properly remvoes the tension in my feet would be, so next time I think I'll let her.

I definitely wouldn't let someone without her level of knowledge do it though - no massage therapists for sure. My osteopath is Jane Kaushal (see her website here) and she has good knowledge of anatomy and is highly skilled.

The main frustration is that I expected to be much more mobile by now. I thought I'd be able to walk about almost normally, so that a short trip into town or on the preschool run would be feasible, and while I thought I'd need to rest still I didn't expect a short baking session with the Little Lady to completely wipe me out.

But I'm nothing if not adaptable. So I've arranged for my lovely mum to come and stay next week (half-term!) to help out with the Little Lady, maybe do a little bit of cleaning for us, and generally ensure I'm not trying to do too much, which I definitely have been this last week and I'm suffering as a result.

And I'll probably be leaning a bit more on my fabulous friends again, to do school runs and help me entertain the Little Lady. I know I owe so many favours right now, but I'll happily pay them back because everyone has been so amazing.

This week I have a hospital appointment to get fitted for some orthotics, which are shaped insoles for my shoes. I had asked about those at my last appointment and the date came through really quickly, so hopefully they'll be made in the next few weeks.

My plan for the future is to wear orthotics and spacers as much as possible, to help maintain my foot shape and hold off recurral of the bunions.

So that's me at the moment. Little Miss Miserable! Let's hope I'm Little Miss Sunshine again soon.