I hurt my Achilles tendon when I was in my 20s and it has flared off and on since then. I got treatment back then for it, but basically since then I've treated it myself with rest, ice, elevation. The basics. I finally decided this year (last year actually, part of the #52PickUp) to go in and get it looked at again.
I also decided to have my toe that I damaged sevenish years ago looked at. The diagnosis at the time was pretty much Whelp can't do anything without surgery and that starts a whole host of other issues so deal. Kind of an over simplification, but that's what it boiled down to. I decided this year that a second opinion might be a good idea.
So the diagnosis on the toe is, whelp, can't really do anything without surgery and that starts a whole host of other issues so deal. With the added bonus of, and honestly surgery might not actually help at all. So...
But basically there is a lot of damage in there and there is arthritis in there that is not going to get better. So I need to treat it as well as I can until there comes a time that I might have to take more drastic measures.
So back to the Achilles. My new foot doctor sent me off to PT to see if there is something that could be done coming from that direction. For the past 6 weeks I've been going to PT twice a week and doing my PT exercises at home.
And I've discovered that the compensating movements I have been doing for my toe throw my Achilles out of alignment. And when I focus on getting my Achilles in alignment I aggravate my toe. And on top of that when I work on the hip exercises that are supposed to pull everything together it tweaks my wonky knees. (Oh yeah, my knees, hips and ankles do not align like they are supposed to because my pelvis developed/spread quickly and the hip joints did not turn the way they should have, or something like that, it's been years since I got that diagnosis, but anyway, my hips are wide but the sockets aren't, that's what it boils down to).
So as I've tried to find the balance between all of the joints I've been frustrated.
I would like to fix the heel pain but not at the expense of the toe and definitely not at the expense of the knees. I would like the knees to work well but I'd rather not do that at the expense of the heel. And I'd like the toe to feel better but not at the expense of the knees and heel. It's all this big circle of but what works best?
And as I was tweaking my calf raises yesterday and thinking about how I was having issues with them now but I was doing much more weight in the gym in the before times without issues I realized it was because of those tweaks.
I would turn my foot just a touch which took enough pressure off of the forefoot so my toe didn't get angry. But because it was still an isolating move it worked the calf muscles nicely. (just not the insertion point for the tendon, apparently) And as I worked through all of this I thought, I'd rather have a sore Achilles than a sore toe. The toe is worse when it flares than the heel is.
And that's what I told my physical therapist today. I'd rather deal with discomfort in one area than pain in another.
And BOOM! What a moment. How often do we do this with A LOT of things? Not just a wonky ankle/toe connection but life as a whole? I know it hurts when I do X but not as much as when I do Y so I'm gonna do Y all day every day thank you very much.
And then the follow through from Daniel today. He wasn't willing to just give up. (Partly because it's not him in pain) but wanted to try tweaking a few things and try again. His ideal is that we reach a point where I can have very little foot pain. Maybe not none, the arthritis is gonna arthritis after all, but a point where my ankle and toe aren't battling it out to see which is worse.
If I do X it hurts but not as much as when I do Y, so I need to figure out how to do Z so it's all good.
This all makes sense in my head. It really does.
Dealing with things that are bothering you can be really awful. Right now I am in the total dregs of August. That last stretch. Moving toward the anniversary of Mom's death, with the September anniversary of Jack's right on the horizon. It's a rough stretch. I've been just sitting with it this year. I started to try and jolly myself out of it, force a birthday month revival, but that was worse. So I decided to let that go. To sit with my feelings this month. Again. Which feels super self indulgent, but it's only been two years. This is only the second anniversary of her death. It's not actually that bad to still be raw. I mean before Mom died I had gotten to the point where Jack's death is a marking of time, a day of thinking of him a little more than normal, but it's not super painful. We live with his loss, but we don't live with the pain of it anymore. Not really. But when Mom died so close to the date that he died it made all of that churn back up again.
But I did that the year she died. And again last year. So this year I was not going to. I was going to move right into the living with the loss but not the pain of it. And...
It hurts to face it. But it feels worse to ignore it.
So instead I'm living with it. With the fact that living with it right now still means living with the pain of it.
Giving myself a little more grace.
Giving myself a little wiggle room.
It will feel better when it feels better.
Maybe next year.
And if not, then that's okay too.
We'll get there. Eventually.
If it hurts to do X but not as much as it hurts to do Y then let's try Z.
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