Footloose

I love walking. I can’t remember how I hurt my foot last spring but I was only able to limp around for months. I self diagnosed it as plantar fasciitis although I’d had that before and this did feel entirely different. This happened when my insurance company was in disagreement with the University of Washington, where all my medical doctors are. I checked into options and without having my Advantage plan foot the bill, it would’ve cost me $400 for a simple office visit with my primary care provider. So I started looking around for podiatrists who were contracted with Aetna, outside of UW. The first one had what I thought was an unpleasant personality and also didn’t really listen to how important being mobile was to me. He kind of shrugged, went along with my self diagnosis and gave me a steroid shot on the side of my foot, which did absolutely no good. I didn’t go back. The second podiatrist was a wonderful Asian man who tenderly held my foot while we talked about my issue. He seemed to think I had a tear in my Achilles tendon and his solution was for me to do nothing for six weeks. No walking. No physical therapy. No exercises. Nada. I liked him a lot so I tried it. It did nothing to help. In the meantime, the Aetna/University of Washington feud ended and I was able to go to a podiatrist at my regular UW medical center. She spent a long time assessing my foot, turning it this way and that. She listened. She recommended a therapist who could give me a couple of helpful exercises. She gave me a small steroid shot in one of the joint spaces on the top of my foot and bingo. Nearly immediately I started to feel better. I’m so grateful to be able to be taking long walks again. When I went for a followup visit with her, I told her about my previous two experiences, how dissatisfied I had been with them, and how pleased I was now. She waved her hand in the air dismissively, smiled a little conspiratorially and said simply, “They were men.”

Photo courtesy Milius007 at Piixabay.com