Your here because yiv sair feet - read on, McDuff
Sair feet - it's a sair fecht
Plantar Fasciitis (PF) - fit a bugger o' a thing.
It's micro tears within the thick band of tissue running along the base of your foot. It arrives without any warning, and gets a lot worse as time passes.
Mine arrived two February's ago, after pounding the streets of London in nice new Sketchers with memory foam.
Man, it got sair. I was slowly turning into a one legged ninety year old with added Tourette's Syndrome as every step was now accompanied with a rash of ever worsening expletives. Ouch and Oooya soon became Arghhh and "for fecks sake".
Time for a trip to the Doc. The waiting room still resembled the dining room of the Mary Celeste, but with the added bonus of it being 27°C with all the windows open.
"Hi Doc"
"Hello, come away in, How are the family, did Tarquin's wee rash clear up"
"It's PF, Doc"
Slow intake of breath and referral to Podiatry was the answer.
Now, a referral to Podiatry actually means a self-referral which gets you an appointment at some indeterminate date in the future. Four months later, I'm in Inverurie. The Podiatrist tells me I have PF. I had to hold my tongue. Two minutes and two insoles with a poorly photocopied list of exercises later, I'm away home.
Pointlessness is now a full time danger in the 21st Century . A visit to Podiatry was pointless as was a recent conversation with "Stacy in Leakage" from Scottish Water, as is the twenty one ( yes, 21! go count them) plastic signs advising you to "pay by app" in the free car park in Station Square. Your Councillor voted for this at a Marr Area Committee Meeting. This is from an Administration that is like a rabbit caught in the headlamps when asked to build a bridge. We've been building bridges since the last glacial retreat 22000 years ago. I'm going to stay away from the Bridge topic to preserve my mental health and lessen the desire to poke really sharp sticks into the Roads and Bridges dept.
Complete waste of time. Time for Doctor Google to take over. Well, there's some shite on t'internet regarding PF. But. by the very fact google had tracked my interest, my social media is now full of adverts for 100% guaranteed cures. That made a change from Russian ladies looking for love.
I now own nine different sets of insoles, several compression socks and a device to pull your foot upwards whilst not sleeping a wink because of the discomfort.
I'm still swearing like a sailor.
Ibuprofen - useless. Paracetamol - useless. Solpadol Max by lying to to the chemist - takes the edge of it, but you become an opiate addict in three days.
Time to ramp up the money loss. Private Physio - 10 sessions - £750. Eventually the air compressor drill started to do some good. Blood flow was returning to my now necrotic plantar fascia. But I'm broke.
Comfy shoes! Who can't resist a comfy shoe. I went for a trendy black Merrell running shoe because I had nothing better to do with £80. You know the sort, thick rubber soled training shoes for lycra clad trail runners to do the Three Peaks Challenge in.
My running experience was limited to compulsory Cross Country (CCC) at state secondary school fifty years ago and the occasional requirement to catch a bus as it departed the stop. Don't get me wrong, CCC was an excellent excuse for schoolboy smokers to spunk up a tab in the woods behind the school and wait for the hardcore runners to return and sneak back on the end of the conga with the PE instructors none the wiser as they'd been fagging away in their staff room anyway.
The comfy shoes were really comfy. They didn't install any desire at all to go running, but they were certainly comfy and the Tourette's was lessening back to Ouch and Oohya.
Internet shopping in the middle of the night is normally a really bad idea. We've all done it, that wee case of red or that economic diesel heater that is still in the box as you can't find a drill big enough to get through 2ft of granite wall for the exhaust outlet and your wife wouldn't tolerate it regardless of how much money it would save you shelling out to OVO every month
But the Russian ladies had left me, probably finding love in Logie Coldstone or Leochel Cushnie instead. My Magpie like eye spotted a shiny thing. It was £8 and next day delivery - couldn't resist it. Pressed pay now and waited.
It arrived in a wee brown cardboard box . It was a cheap Chinese knock off of a more expensive brand - considerably more expensive - £100 more expensive. I'm Scottish and what's worse, an Aberdonian and we know how tight they are. Tighter that a duck's arse, and that's watertight. So I love a bargain.
I hid the purchase from my other half, I was on a final warning for buying shite in the middle of the night and was trying to regain some Brownie points. She went to bed and I quietly opened the box.
It was red and needed a USB C charger stuck into it. The excitement was building, desperate to use it. I'll stay up for another hour whilst it charges. She'll never know.
2am, fully charged. Dog is eyeing me suspiciously , he's got a box, there could be dry-cured prosciutto in there. He looses interest and curls back up.
Did I say it was red? It was, and had 4 buttons. an on/off switch, a heat switch, a sooky switch and an emergency stop switch. Some bit of kit for £8.
It sooks onto your foot with a vacuum and you can set a heat level. It pulls the fascia apart and allows blood to flow again.
And it works, brilliantly and it was £8.
The dog is slowly recovering from 18 months of thinking he was in trouble from my Plantar Fasciitis induced Tourette's Syndrome
https://amzn.eu/d/05r04eBI
Note to Editors: If you want this, I charge £10000 per blog along with four £75 vouchers for The Boat Inn. Nick it and I'll sue the arse off of you.
