How I Got the Way I Did - Part two

Part 2.

Pain is indeed a motivator. It’s not, however, the most reliable guide to life decisions. I wanted to find solutions for my own feet problems. What I actually got, however, was both less and more than I thought I would be getting.

I did eventually find a teacher, and found myself introduced to the science of biomechanics. I seemed to take to the concepts like a duck to water, and eventually found myself working for the California College of Podiatric Medicine, running their Mechanical Orthopedics Laboratory, where I learned to make foot orthosis, broadening my repertoire from footwear only. I began to audit all the classes offered in biomechanics, and eventually was asked to attend rounds in the college’s hospital and clinic. I became adept at gait analysis, and found my specialty in the area of limb-length discrepancy. After three years with the college, I launched my own orthotic lab, still making and modifying shoes, as well. I ran the lab for seven years, then sold to another lab, working for them for the next five. During that time, I founded a national laboratory association that still exists today. I also was asked by one of my biomechanics mentors to contribute several chapters to a new biomechanics text book.

I did go on to write two chapters – one on footwear modification, and the other on BK (below the knee) orthotic devices. The textbook is called Clinical Biomechanics of the Lower Extremity, Valmassy, Ed., Mosby, pub. During this same period, I had a unique opportunity to travel and lecture to a variety of medical schools in the US, Canada, and the UK.

It was also in this period I met the inventor of a new technology. Using computer-aided CAD-CAM milling technologies, a laser imager to image the foot, and a custom computer program, Alex Shang, the inventor, gave me another opportunity – to be the first to actually use the technology in real production settings. I went on to develop a training manual and training program that I later delivered to many other orthotic labs around the country.

Eventually, I became a little burned out. I had been working long days and long hours for many years, helping many people live better, less painful lives. During the period I ran my own lab, it was quite common for me to work 6 and sometimes 7 days a week, and often fifteen or more hours a day, especially in the first four years until I could afford to hire my first employee.

Finally, I decided it was time for a change. I went back to school to get a certificate in training, and through a number of stumbles, eventually ended up in the field of high tech. And after the bubble burst, I had to reinvent myself again.

After all that, one thing stood out for me personally. I had been very good helping make other people’s feet easier to walk on. I reduced pain, saved diabetic feet, cushioned arthritic feet, on and on. But the one thing I failed to accomplish, at least to the degree I had desired to, was to remove the pain from my own feet. This was because, I believe, club feet cannot be approached like other foot maladies. Their pathomechanic structure and function is not well addressed by regular biomechanical approaches. Eventually, I was forced to admit I would have some change, just not all the change I desired. It was at that point of understanding I eventually came to learn a very important lesson.

Post-club feet, regardless of the various solutions applied, just do not have the structural and functional ability to do what anyone else can do. They tire more easily. They often swell, and are often in pain. What this tells me is quite simple, but also quite disappointing. I have limits. And, the more I respect those limits, the less pain I experience. But this has been a very hard reality for me to adjust to, though now, in my late fifties, I can use the partial excuse that age is now a factor. Not completely satisfying, but it will have to do.

So, I hope this somewhat explains my perspective. But before ending this rant, I want to go back to the point I hinted at in the first section – in the first paragraph, actually. That is, being alienated from my own feet.

Club feet are, in my experience, a somewhat “hidden” malady. I would compare it, at least in my adult years, as akin to the experience suffered by those with epilepsy. Not with the actual disorder, mind you, but with the somewhat invisible quality it presents. People may not know you have it until it reveals itself during a seizure episode. Just as people may not know I have club feet, until I appear before them limping, or have to beg off an invitation to go on that ten mile hike they’d been wanting to do with me for some time. It is at those moments when I find I have to make a decision. Its not that I am ashamed about my condition, not at all.

It’s that I am tired of explaining it. These feet have taken far too much mind-share over the years. There are many times when I am lost in some activity, only to have all my attention rudely redirected back down toward the ground. And having to explain why that is, is exhausting. As a child and a youth, I was never able to NOT think about these tired, twisted doggies. And as an adult, I have spent most of my life focused on feet, other’s, certainly, but also my own.

So it is not all that surprising I am often puzzled, looking down, to see some things attached to my legs. Some things I have trouble owning. Until, that is, one day about five years ago. I was, as not unusually, awake around two or three AM, my wife asleep. I have been an insomniac, mostly due to my chronic pain, for years. But on this occasion, something happened I could have never anticipated.

I got up to make a cup of tea. Sitting in the kitchen, I looked down at my feet, and suddenly, like a bolt of lightening, I saw my feet in a completely new light. I saw them as a gift. Despite all I have experienced because of these feet, they put me in the way of many people I would otherwise never have met. They had led me to the opportunity to help others with their own obstructions. They had taught me about the true diversity of the human species. They had caused me to seek knowledge I would otherwise have completely ignored.

They have, in effect, taken me on a very interesting life journey, and that, more than anything, make them a gift I am only just learning to fully appreciate. Back in the podiatry college, there was a gross joke told about the purpose of feet. (Medical students are quite famous for their disgusting jokes.) It seems that the true purpose of human feet is to merely keep your ankles from fraying. And that was essentially how I viewed them for much of my life.

But the real purpose of feet, I know now, is to allow us to walk through our lives, and to put us in the way of others who will change us, support us, and whom we, in turn, can change and support. And the pain is merely the motivator.