[pct-l] Desperately need help for "Delicate Princess Foot Syndrome"

[steve_peterson at sbcglobal.net (Steve Peterson)]

Maggie wrote:
> Thanks for the contact cement idea!
> 
> I admit to not having put a GREAT deal of effort into
> the podiatrist route thus far. However, I have spoken
> to one podiatrist who suggested I wear cotton socks. I
> was not particularly impressed with that advice, as
> you can well imagine.
> 
> Other podiatrist offices I have called have required a
> referral from my regular doctor. I don't actually HAVE
> a regular doctor...and don't have health insurance.
> Interesting way the medical world works these days. At
> any rate, I initially became rather discouraged by my
> attempts to find help from the medical community. At
> this point however, I might just show up and hold a
> podiatrist's office hostage with my hiking poles if
> that's what it takes to get back on the trail.

I know how you feel. I held off seeing anyone for a long time, trying one thing 
after another. Finally I realized that I'd seen one pair of feet (mine) and a 
decent podiatrist had probably seen a thousand or two and might be able to give 
me some ideas I hadn't yet tried.
> 
> Your feet sound VERY similar to mine. However (and I
> have long since lost the little worksheet from my foot
> measuring) I recall that my forefoot still falls
> within the "narrow" category.

I would think that would make your feet easier to fit for shoes--my wide 
forefoot needs a wide shoe but a wide shoe has a wide heel and my heel is 
narrow--a problem since shoe manufacturers don't cater to folks like me. At 
least your foot sounds consistently narrow...

> 
> I usually get blisters on my heels. Even if I let them
> callous over, they will develope a new blister on top
> of the callous on the next hike. Occassionally I've
> even gotton blisters on the BOTTOM of my heels-- ouch!

That tells me your heels are moving around *a lot* in your shoes. That shouldn't 
be happening, it seems to me. Do you know what pronation and supination are? Are 
you doing either one of them excessively? Feet are supposed to pronate a little 
as the foot accomodates itself to the ground and takes up the load, but too much 
pronation is a bad thing. If you're supinating or pronating to excess, that 
would cause a great deal of friction on your heels. Another question: are you at 
all knock-kneed (or, less likely given that you are female, bow-legged)? Either 
one can cause the foot to land "improperly" (from the foot's point of view) and 
thereby rub itself to death on the shoe (as well as not be supported properly).
Have someone walk behind you (video you if possible) as you walk on level 
ground; compare how your feet/legs look as they hit the ground and push off vs. 
how most other people's look. If you're doing something truly weird (like 
climbing up the inside of your shoe), it will jump out at you and you'll have 
the major culprit in this mystery.

Also, does this happen with street shoes or only hiking shoes? If only hiking 
shoes, only with a pack or all the time? (Maybe your legs don't respond well to 
carrying more than your body weight).

> 
> I started trying out sandals, and initially had
> excellent results. This weekend's trek over Donahue
> Pass to Thousand Island Lake on the JMT resulted in my
> toes rubbing together and blisters forming between my
> toes! (That's a first!)

But, see, now you're using different footwear so *of course* the blisters are 
going to be different, because the foot is responding differently to the new 
footwear. I had a pair of shoes once that caused my forefoot to slide to the 
outside and that put pressure on my little toe, bending it inward so that it 
mushed up against its neighbor--it created first a blister, then over 
weeks/months a sizable corn on the 4th toe--very painful. Once I realized what 
the shoe was doing to me, I got different shoes and the problem soon went away. 
Before I figured that out, I tried socks, vaseline, bandaids, nothing worked 
because the shoe was creating the problem--the corn was the foot's way of 
protecting itself (toughening up) but the corn also made matters worse by taking 
up space between the toes. So look at how your feet are behaving in the 
sandals--something is causing the toes to rub together. The sandal might be 
cupped, or maybe it's causing your foot to slip to one side as you push off or 
something like that.


  With unbearable foot fatigue
> after about 4 hours of hiking, even with numerous
> stops and chances to soak my feet in the streams. I
> literally cried for the last 3 hours of the hike to
> Thousand Island Lake on Saturday-- which took about 3
> hours longer than it ought to have!
> 
> The GOOD news is that my HEELS are blister free this
> time-- small consolation considering I'm back at home
> now.

Blisters are *information*. It takes a while, but you can eventually "read" 
blisters (not perfectly, but enough to get hints of what's going on). And from 
what you say, you have a library chock-full of reading material :-)  Each one of 
those puppies can tell you something. Also, look at the wear patterns on your 
shoes (street shoes as well as hiking shoes). Do you wear down one part more 
than other parts (e.g., outside of the heel or inside of the heel)? One shoe 
more than the other (left vs. right, I mean)?

This will take some effort (given what I suspect is a huge amount of data you 
must have by now) but the "scientist" in me wants to take each pair of the shoes 
you've tried and list what each one did to your feet, then look at the shoes and 
try to figure out *why* that shoe resulted in the effect you noticed. If you 
were to do that, I bet some patterns would emerge and that might help you figure 
out what directions to go. Besides, if you see a podiatrist, s/he'll likely need 
that info--when I first saw mine, I took in a *bag* full of shoes. He looked at 
every pair, told me what he thought was the problem, *then* looked at my feet 
and said "yup, just what I figured from the wear pattern on your shoes". 
Needless to say I was flabbergasted--I'd never imagined so much info could come 
from looking at worn out shoes!
--Steve