Karen’s* foot wasn’t actually ‘killing her’, but she used that metaphor frequently when anyone asked why she was walking with a limp. It’s true, she would continue to live on despite her foot pain, but her concern over how she was going to continue to earn a living was real. Semi-retired, she lived fairly comfortably off what she made from her weekly market stall. All of that was at risk though as she weighed up what was going to give in her day-to-day life in the hopes of making her pain manageable.
Her pain started off fairly innocuously. She wasn’t sure what started it, or what she had done to anyone to deserve it continuing. It seemed like the moment she put her foot down on the floor, though, it would start. She described her pain as like she was always standing on a sharp rock, right under the middle of the arch in her foot. Paracetamol didn’t make a difference. Ibuprofen made things a little better, but she worried about the effects of using it longer term. At any rate, the idea of using medication didn’t really sit well with her. She thought of herself as an otherwise healthy person but with walking, her main source of physical activity, now something she avoided at all costs she was worried about the effects it would have on her health.
A GP was someone she didn’t see often, she didn’t often have the need. Since her foot was giving her such pain, though, she relented and was happy to take an appointment with any doctor she could find in the hopes of getting towards a resolution sooner rather than later. The GP she saw was friendly and thorough, asking lots of questions she hadn’t considered. Karen found it interesting how difficult it was to describe her symptoms and how long they had been giving her trouble for. She was even more surprised to find herself tears when talking about how distressed she was about her foot, it somehow just all poured out of her as she spoke. After discussing her use of pain relief, and reassuring her about what things were safe to take, the GP encouraged her that ‘physio’ might help and gave her a referral and an appointment to follow up on her progress once she had attended.
She followed up on the referral the next day, making an appointment with the clinic her GP had recommended. In the days between, though, something worried her. Over coffee with a friend, a story was recounted of her friend’s experiences with ‘physio’. She wasn’t sure she knew what she was in for, so it worried her to hear her friend talk about how much ‘physio’ hurt and how long it took her to get better in her experience with her own problems. As the day of the appointment approached she was nervous, and nearly even cancelled, but she was brave and went along with it knowing that her GP had some confidence that this would help.
It wasn’t anything like she expected. She was worried it would be agony, but when she left she was already walking better. She thought there would be lots of prodding and poking, but the physio watched her walk and did some tests but it didn’t hurt. She was worried she was going to be told that she was in for the long haul or worse, that there was nothing more that could be done. Instead the physio explained some of the reasons she might be having pain, showed her some simple changes she could make and also gave her a couple things to do that might help in the long run. She felt assured, calm and confident.
When she caught up with her friend the following week, her friend noticed that she was walking like she hadn’t seen her do in quite some time. Karen couldn’t even wait for her friend to ask how the appointment went. “It was nothing like I thought it was going to be” she said. She told her friend her version of everything that she had picked up, how hopeful she felt and they even talked about making that shopping trip date they had been putting off. She had take for granted just how much pain had changed her life but now she knew things were going to get better.