Flashes of Panic

As I sit here, I’m rolling my bare right foot back and forth over a bottle of ice. It’s a green plastic Gatorade bottle of the sort you’d see on the sidelines at a football game, a smidge smaller than a canister of tennis balls, and I filled it and froze it solid in the office freezer weeks ago. I will work my foot over it absent-mindedly until my foot is quite numb, then return the bottle to the freezer to be ready for another session later.

The problem that I have is called plantar fasciitis, or PF for those unsure of the spelling of “fasciitis.” At root, it’s a very simple problem: the fascia muscle on the underside (plantar) of my foot is tight and/or inflamed. It’s very common among runners and people who make poor shoe choices, though I’d never had problems with it before. For a demo, put your (shoeless) right foot on your left knee. Grab the toes with your right hand and push them back so they’re nearly perpendicular to the rest of the foot (or at least as far back as they will comfortably go.) Run your left hand along by your arch, where the doctor checks the foot reflex. You’re feeling the plantar fascia. Now imagine it aching whenever you’re on your feet for an extended period (say, half an hour in the grocery store) and you’re close to where I am.

Since the plantar fascia wraps around the heel bone, most people experience PF as heel pain. I’ve gone through a few stages, one the classic heel pain, another involving the constant feeling of having a large rock lodged in the arch of my shoe. Now it mostly aches, except for some occasions when it “pulls,” a sort of stabbing feeling in the arch followed by the rock-in-the-shoe feeling.

I’ve been fighting this since the beginning of August of last year, when I tried just treating it with rest. Since then, I’ve hit just about all of the recommended treatments, including (but not limited to):

• Massaging my foot by rolling it over a golf ball (not good)
• Icing (ongoing)
• Taping (largely ineffective, but better than not taping)
• Active Release therapy (no significant improvement, but try it for iliotibial band syndrome)
• New orthotics (no significant improvement)
• New shoes (I miss my nice, light trainers and resent my clunky motion-control bricks)
• Arch braces (like taping, it doesn’t seem to help, but it lets me run without making things worse, usually.)
• A “sock”-type night splint (The most useful thing I’ve tried, since it keeps me from tightening up overnight, but after eight months I’m thoroughly sick of it; I remember to put it on at night when I wonder why I feel so comfortable.)
• Finally, a cortisone shot. (Helpful for about two months, but obviously no magic bullet.)

So far as I can tell, there are three things I haven’t tried: more-rigid orthotics, surgery to release the plantar fascia, and acupuncture. (I’m leaving out a foot transplant, aromatherapy, Rolfing, and bionic replacement; psychotherapy might be called for eventually, though.)

I am running some now, but between thirty and forty miles a week (around half my pre-PF load) I have plateaued. I can’t add more miles without a significantly sorer foot, but I can’t really do anything I want to do without adding more miles. Since running at a faster pace stresses the plantar more than running at a slow pace (since the quicker pace is, essentially, applying more force to the arch at toe-off) I’m stalled at about 8:00 pace, unless I’m in a race. (Racing is like alcohol; one loses a certain percentage of judgment when a starter yells, “GO!”) I need to maintain a heavy icing and stretching regimen to run even this much, along with the taping, bracing and splinting. This can get particularly amusing when I find myself taking a break from a road trip in order to sit on a bench outside a grocery store with my foot on the five-pound bag of ice I just bought.

There’s some question in my mind if it’s worth it; if I should quit trying to run for a while, and once again focus full attention on getting rid of the problem. I’ve heard stories of people fighting this for seven months to a year; I’m on ten months now. The catch with that approach is that a certain amount of running is simply required for me as my life is currently structured; when I am not running, I am not much fun to be around. (Whether I am much fun to be around when I am running is a question I am not prepared to address objectively, but when I’m not running even I sometimes don’t like being around me.)

And then there’s the question of whether I actually have the time and energy to focus on the problem with everything else I’m trying to do. There are too many commitments on the back burner as it is.

Now playing: Irresistible Force from Revenge Of The Goldfish by Inspiral Carpets