The doctors call it Pes Planus; I call it flat feet, and always have, for as long as I have had them. Growing up, I never really thought much about it; it didnt hurt or prevent me from taking up sports, climbing trees or doing anything at all. I never thought they could be anything more than a minor embarrassment if anyone should pay attention to the way my footprints looked when I happened to cross the boardwalk after getting out of the water. I did learn that flat feet could be a major problem though when the pain started killing me, and I went to a doctor.
The pain was so serious that most of the time I couldnt stand or walk. I hoped that the doctor would just send me to a physiotherapist for exercises that would help me realign my feet or something. I just wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible so I could get back to my happy and active lifestyle. It turned out it wasnt as simple as that. The orthopedic doctor did everything in the book braces, orthotics, taping, just about anything you could think of. When none of that worked, he decided he would have to send me to a proper orthopedic surgeon. Surgery for flat feet? I was pretty confident that that wouldnt be necessary, primarily because Id never heard of surgery for flat feet. It turned out that that was the first thing on the doctors mind.
The whole process he promised would be costly, painful, and would take a lot of physical therapy. I thought maybe if I tried another surgeon, he might be more reasonable; the next one though only wanted to get the surgery done the next day. I gave up trying to run away from the unavoidable and accepted. Most people go through life with flat feet, and no severe problems. My problem was that my arches had completely fallen flat, and this made the rest of my leg trying too hard to accommodate for the unnatural things my feet were doing by pulling in ways that hurt my spine, my knees, and everything else.
I guess I understand now why they reject applicants with flat feet in the military. I havdmedical insurance, and that would take care of most of the costs; but I still had to pay $3000 out of pocket. The whole thing required three different surgeries on each foot, and each foot would be done on a different day. All the procedures had really strange names - calcaneal osteotomy, iliac aspiration, lateral column lengthening, and so on. They deployed every kind of space-age technology in the operation. They sawed off my heel and screwed it in place to help make an arch. They made my calf muscles longer with a graft to help them cope better with my poor walking gait. They also took a piece of bone from a dead body, coated in my own narrow and put it in as a splint. At the end of the five hour surgery, I didn't have flat feet anymore - I only had one flat foot. The X-ray showed me how they'd put a beautiful arch in there.
I took my painkillers, because apparently it can get painful otherwise. About a week later, I was back on my good foot hobbling about finding my way back to the doctor's office for a checkup. Things were going well and in two months, I started with physical therapy. The doctor said I was not to fly at all until then; as the altered pressure of the airplane cabin would make my feet swell up. I thought I'd try it anyway, and 3000 miles from home, I called the doctor crying about how my foot looked like someone had put a watermelon inside it. He just told me to elevate it for a few hours and it would go right back down. I didn't experiment with my foot anymore after that, and three months later, I was good as new.
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