TW: Surgery, photo of IV, injury

I love shoes. I really do. I chronically overpack anyway, so usually I struggle not to bring at least 3 pairs on even the shortest trip. I love trying different kinds of shoes but I can be really picky about my favorites and I have some pairs that I have clung onto forever. I’m going to be talking to you folks a lot about my favorite kinds of travel gear, footwear and apparel on this blog, so I wanted to tell you all a little story about why I had to learn how to walk a second time and why I get so into my footwear.

I got called all kinds of things because of my feet growing up; penguin, seal, frog, ect. I had a pretty bad case of very large flat feet. They didn’t quite fit right in shoes and as a little girl I often found myself with a shoe full of blood from various blisters acquired while playing and as I grew they became even more problematic.

Despite my feet and footwear challenges, I played many sports growing up, always struggling with running and trying one sneaker after another. At one point my grandmother even took me into a pediatrist in the 90’s who told me that usually people with flat feet have messed up muscles and my bones were actually the wrong shapes, so other than propping my arches up with pins that he said may just fall down again in a few years, the only thing I could do was put some orthotics in and hope for the best.

By college I was playing rugby for Wentworth, with a wonderful team of people in all shapes and sizes and no one picked on each other for the way they ran. It was only then, for the first time, I had one of my athletic coaches stop me while I was running and say, “no, no, something isn’t right, take your cleats off.”

From that day on, my coach Keith had someone, or he himself would, tape up my ankles every game & showed me how to do it because he told me he could see my ankle almost dislocating into my arch. About 3 seasons after this, while working my part time barista job I found myself unable to stand through a 3 hour shift without taping my feet and spending hours recuperating and icing.

After a particularly painful shift, I limped to the benches outside of our store and just sat and cried for a bit. I didn’t know what to do. I was barely 21 yet I felt like an old women. I couldn’t go out with friends because I needed to rest my feet, I couldn’t exercise anymore, just working and attending classes was almost too painful to handle. I saw my future waving goodbye to me. How was I supposed to see the world? Work? Socialize, or ever have a family when being on my feet for three hours sent crippling pain through my ankles that were not almost protruding next to my arches?

I remembered the pins and the doctor from when I was little and I was scared, but the idea of living life like this forever was even more scary, so I picked up the phone and made an appointment with a Orthopedic surgeon to see about getting at least something done for my feet.

Luckily things have come along way since the 90’s and my doctor was as much artist as he was a doctor of science. It turned out I had been born with severe muscular and bone deformities and basically all my tendons are more stretchy than they should be. Their summary for me was, “Your muscles are the wrong sizes and your bones are the wrong shapes & are collapsing in on themselves, and if we don’t fix then you will be in a wheelchair by 30.”

What they ended up having to do was two surgeries, about 6 months apart on each foot, and saw apart the bones, insert porous titanium wedges that the bones would grow into to form new arches, chop of a big chunk of stretched out tendon that had died and anchor the healthy bit down, and take a graft of muscle from my calf to attach to my Achilles to make it longer.

I had to spend months in physical therapy learning basic motions of walking, searing pain as nerves regrew, itchy casts, battling New England weather in crutches and mobility scooters, but in the end it was worth it. No pins and a permanent solution. I will not be running any marathons any time soon unless I do a whole lot more PT but now I have feet that will carry me anywhere I want in this earth.

When I find myself in a new place, I often just walk and wander to find things. Just use my own two feet and set off, staring in wonder at everything around me. It’s a characteristic that my mother says I share with my explorer uncle, but now when I do it, I often look down at my new feet and feel so much love and gratitude for everyone from my rugby team & coach to seeing the problem & taking care of me instead of shaming me for it — which later gave me to have the confidence to seek out a doctor, to my surgical team & their life saving artwork, to all my family and friends who dutifully visited, brought gifts, waited for me to literally get my feet back under me & held my hand as I learned how to walk all over again.

My feet are really special, they help me get everywhere and a lot of people did a lot to make sure I could have them, so, maybe that’s why I get pretty careful about what I wear on them! I can’t wait to tell you guys about all my favorite pairs of shoes for travelling.