I've always been stubborn about my own medical needs. It took 5 years of living with depression before I finally went in and admitted I had a problem.
I once dropped a can of supplemental baby formula on my foot but didn't "have time" to go in until a couple months later. It was broken and contining to walk on it had only caused calcium deposits to form bone spurs instead of healing.
This time I've outdone myself. A few months ago I started feeling uncomfortable. An ache in the bottom of my left foot.
I ignored it. Just working long hours, probably just tired, besides, it felt better over the weekend.
But it got worse, and worse over time. Started taking pain meds and kept ignoring it. It kept getting worse and soon I was walking around work with no shoes on to take pressure off.
For weeks this kept up, in so much pain I feel like a cripple. But I have to work. I am my children's sole provider. I keep that roof over our heads and put that food in the dog bowls.
So I worked through it. Until this past weekend when I was waking up still in pain. Tuesday I was freaking crying on my shift at work and pretending everything was okay.
So I finally broke doen and went to Urgent Care.
They took 9 X-Rays. Nine. They said they couldn't see anything but gave me some funny looks and made me an appointment with orthopedics the following day.
Aaaand this happened.
Such a severe case of Plantar Faciitis (sp) that the doctor told me if I do not stay off my feet as much as possible I will need surgery to correct the problem.
So I get a great big boot and an insert for my other foot to keep the same thing from happening on the other side as well.
I have to keep that boot on for 3 weeks, and if there is no improvement from the physical therapy and the boot, surgery is a thing in my near future.
Walked in to work today and told them what the doctor said. The manager said to me "Too bad you work somewhere that keeps you on your feet. You'll be on line today."
😒
That doesn't fly. I have people who need me.
So I have a damned chair, and a whole lot of looks and snide comments. I got this way working for you!
I'm a crabby tree today you guys.
And I'm asking you, please don't do this to yourselves. I know I'm not the only one out there. I know you're busy. I know you cannot afford to take the time off. I know you think it will resolve itself. But sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes you are crippling yourself over it.
Take care of yourselves, please. Your children and your body will thank you!
And yes, this is my excuse for not posting the last couple of days. I will get the trio together tonight and get the winners of the #litterwalk posted either tonight or tomorrow, thank you for your patience!
Love to you!
Hey @hickorymack. Sorry to hear that your injury has progressed to this stage. I can certainly see both sides of this. I don't think you really did anything wrong. You're a hard worker and needed to occupy yourself with the necessities of life. I also understand the idea of trying to let the body heal itself rather than running to the doctor for every niggling thing. Like everything the answer probably rests somewhere in the middle. Best wishes for the boot being the end of it and I hope your employer shows you a little more compassion!
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Thanks for the reminder, I also need to take a bit care of myself, I still have problems with my back. If I do 10 minutes of exercise every day I will probably never ever have problems. However, when the pains aren't that acute, it's hard to find the time, place and motivation to do this.
For a full year I wasn't able to work full time by the computer. We have quite good social security systems in Norway, so that was the least of my worry. Health care is supposed to be heavily subsidized in Norway, but I still had to pay quite a lot from my own pockets for physiotherapists. I saw three of them, and they all told me different things - I did learn some things though. In retro-perspective, I could probably have found everything I needed to know through google and youtube, and managed with much less than a year of "downtime" if I had just been careful and doing proper training from the very first time I started to feel back pains.
My biggest problem was to be a good father despite my back pains ... especially towards the youngest daughter that was very hard, she still needs some help taking on and off clothes, she wants to be carried around, she often sat down and denied walking at all when I tried to take her to the kinder garden (and although I had a partial sick leave and this delay was indirectly caused by my back pains, my employer was not impressed when I came late due to that), even today the only good way I've found to get her up from the bed in the mornings is to lift her up from the bed, give her a warm hug and carry her to the breakfast table.
Most of the time I was unable to sit for more than some few minutes. That makes it impossible to do things like driving a car, or taking an airplane. Some of the time I had big problems walking as well, I think I had one or two weeks "off" where my wife had to take care of the family while I was staying mostly at the boat, eventually getting to a physio clinic every now and then, plus short visits to the office.
I would have been totally lost without a supportive wife as well as without economical safety nets (first of all the Norwegian social security system). My only option then would have been to call the child protection services for help - though I'm concerned they would cause more problems than help. Theoretically, the eldest brother is old enough to be able to take some care of the younger siblings, but in practice he's just not good at it.
And the boat really helped me too. At the very worst, it was painful to stand, sit, walk, lie down ... but swimming was quite OK. At the worst I wasn't able to walk the distance from home to public transport, but I was able to moore up the boat pretty close to a train station. Distances are also much smaller at the boat than at home (for instance, at home, the kitchen and toilet are on separate floors). When it's impossible to drive a car and impossible to take an airplane, the boat was also the only option for doing a vacation with my family.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Perhaps you can set a reminder on your phone to do those exersizes each day? I totally get what you mean. I have done the same but with my mental health.
After taking meds for a while and starting to feel better I tend to stop taking them, missing one here and there, and eventually failing to renew the prescription. And it's okay for a little while but then it crashes down and the cycle repeats. 😒
What caused your back pain? That's always a huge fear for me, a friend in high school had issues with the disk between two vertabrae and the pain she was in was horrendous.
I'm glad you were able to get help for it! Your little ones would be grateful if their papa was to keep up the regemine, I'm sure!
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
It's slightly more difficult than to just spend ten minutes - I need some clean, flat floor space plus some privacy. Well, the latter is not really a requirement, but still ... I don't like people watching me while I lay down at the floor and do silly things. The options are at home, at the deck of the boat and at work. The latter is pretty much out, we have full transparency at work, glass walls everywhere. While I guess it's possible to do the exercises on a dirty floor, I don't really feel like it, so at home I need to vacuum before I can get down on the floor. I bought a robot vacuumer to make this easier, but to be able to run it I first need to tidy up the floor ... which is difficult as the youngest is distributing toys all over the floor faster than what I can clean up.
It seems like the best thing is to clean and vacuum the floor and get the exercises done in the morning, before the kids get up, but it's of course a bit challenging to get early enough up from bed, and not to waste too much of my time checking steemit, mail, etc.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Don't blame yourself for this at least ... one can go to the doctor too often, or too late, it's rarely possible to know in advance exactly when it's time to see the doctor.
In the very most cases whatever problems one have, the best, cheapest and easiest solution is to just let it go over by itself. In many cases, doctors cannot do much except offering placebo treatment. It's perfectly rational to procrastinate a visit to the doctor.
I hope you will get through those three weeks financially.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Are you still alive?
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Plantar fasciitis is the reason, well that and degenerative disc disease, why I can not longer work retail. My last retail job was working for Walmart and in 2015 the planters fasciitis came back after working retail for about 5 months. It's excruciating pain! I can't even imagine the level you must have of it! I could no longer work retail ever because of it, and won a very small lawsuit against Walmart for my pain. I loved working retail, for the most part, and really miss it but my feet can't handle it. I tried to ignore it and return to hiking as well, another love, but it also flairs up my feet and by the time it flairs it, I'm deep into a word or something n by the time I get back, I'm in tears, so I just don't go anymore. I hope you don't have to have surgery!
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit