Yesterday I had an interesting (??) thing happen to me. My feet had been absolutely fine all day, I did my normal walking in the morning and had no problem. Then suddenly the bone at the base of my left big toe felt like it was hit with a hammer! I couldn’t put any pressure on it at all and bending my toe was out of the question.
This could be a really serious problem if you’re a runner and you’re going at full-clip, and I was really happy it hadn’t happened when I was miles away from home this morning. The bone hurt so badly that my leg almost collapsed. This was a new pain for me and it took a bit of detective work to find the spasms that caused the problem. Plus, it came on so suddenly I realized that it was actually a cramp in the muscle fibers — it was just figuring out which muscle fibers!
I slid my two pointer fingers from to tip of both big toes down over the joint and sure enough, the bone on my left foot was raised, like it had popped out of joint. And the bone hurt like crazy! I was afraid that I had a bone bruise and I’m sure glad that wasn’t the case. I once had a bone bruise on my heel that took a full year to resolve.
I started to explore the muscles that have any impact on that bone/joint and sure enough I found serious spasms in the tiny muscles that are between the metatarsal (long bone of the foot) that attaches to the big toe, and I also found a painful spasm on my arch, almost directly on the opposite side of the one between my metatarsals. Ouch!
I held my fingertip on each of the spasms for as long as I could, it hurt so much that I couldn’t hold it for a long time, and then let go and tried to move my big toe up and down. It hurt, but it was moving a bit. So I kept going back and forth – pressure for a few minutes, then bend my toe up and down. The downward movement was the most painful so I knew that the muscle on the top of my foot (between the metatarsals) was the initial cause of the problem.
It took a good half-hour of back and forth before I could walk normally. There was a little discomfort, but not really pain. I kept at it, although not to the intensity of when I first started, and this morning I didn’t have any pain at all.
I hadn’t thought after all these years of treating spasms that there was anything new that could be found – and I was wrong. I hope it never happens to you, but if it does you now know what to do and how to do it.
Moving right along!
Wishing you well,
Julie