Unexpected outcome of my shoe-making quest: Today I asked my doctor for a referral to an orthopedic specialist.
(I have not, to be clear, made any wearable shoes yet. But I’ve fiddled with fabric and thought about shoes a great deal, and that must count for something, yes?)
A lot of disabled people really don’t like the word “deformed” and I absolutely get why. I wouldn’t vibe with it so hard if there wasn’t an element of self-hatred in my feelings about my feet. So I don’t know if anyone else would, but I myself found overjoyed to find a representation of feet like mine on a title card reading, “Third-Degree Deformity”.
Like, holy shit, it’s me! I’ve never seen something that looks so much like me before! And I don’t even care that this is the textbook demonstration of Feet So Fucked Up They Can’t Be Changed By Mere Footwear. If anything, that’s reassuringly validating.
To be perfectly frank, I feel a tiny surge of pride that my feet are way more fucked up than that person’s. I’ll demonstrate with the plaster cast I did lately in the quest to create a working shoe last for myself:
While the healthy human foot has a big toe almost completely in line with the metatarsal behind it, behold! My big toe is almost at a perfect 45° angle from its predecessor! Whereas that guy in the demonstration title card is only like 20° off.
(I have not once in my life felt sexy or attractive, so I’ve got to find moments of pride somewhere, okay?)
This is exciting because usually the reason for the big toe to be crooked, and to form a bunion, is wearing shoes with pointy toes and inadequate stability around the ankle, like typical high heels. So that’s what almost all advice about bunions is aimed at, which was very frustrating when I didn’t even have the option to wear the high heels all the available information told me were the cause of my issues.
As it turns out, the cause of my issues was just… my normal feet as God made them. “Hyper-pronation” means the tendency of the foot to lie flat with its arch against the floor. If someone walks for years on a foot that is allowed to constantly pronate, the toes tend to develop this sort of outward drag. And, well, my pedorthist and I figured out that if my ankle is straight and un-collapsed, the ball of my foot doesn’t touch the ground, so my foot is inherently incapable of not pronating all the time without help.
The footwear solution to this is usually an orthopedic insole that raises the inside of my foot so it can’t roll out, and that sounds great, but the easier and cheaper thing my pedorthist figured out was just to alter the layers of foam he has to glue to the bottom of my shoe anyway to provide the correct axial tilt to my foot.
Now that I’m not constantly walking on a pronated foot, an orthopedic surgeon could do things to help correct some of the damage that’s been done already, like the serious case of hammer toe in my outer two toes, or maybe getting my big toe to give up some of that 45°. I’ll be waiting months for that referral to spit out a meeting with a specialist, though.
In the meantime I’ve been playing with plasticine, trying to come up with a toe shape for my shoes that provides support, but doesn’t pinch. Fluevog shoes often have a beautifully flared toe shape that’s always appealed to me on an aesthetic level, and might now be just what the doctor ordered.
Or well, no doctor yet. But I think it might work.
Right underneath that window, you see a crystallized figure. (Follow me on twitch where I draw these illustrations live and support me on ko-fiandpatreon!)
