Shoeless Sayre



Not my ankle but looks like it.

 What is going on with my feet?  You know that vaguely stretched out, uncomfortable feeling you can get when you've eaten too much?  Well, I was sitting at my desk, minding my own business and getting things done when I felt that sensation down in my feet.  I scooted the chair out from the desk and looked and sure enough, both ankles were swollen. 

Now, I understand that if you're still for too long, that can happen.  I made the mistake of googling it and found all kinds of horrible causes (heart failure, diabetes, deep vein thrombosis and a host of other horrors).  Certain drugs, three of which I take daily, can also cause it.  But up until recently, I haven't really had trouble with any of those things.

I think it's my shoes.

Shoes and I have not had the best of relationships.  For one thing, my feet are very tall through the middle.  I inherited that from my dad.  They've always been a bit boxy in the toes but since I got pregnant with my son, my feet have almost literally turned into duck feet.  Finding shoes that are comfortable (or even fit) has been a challenge since then.  I have a couple of pairs of sneakers, a pair of flip flops and a pair of Tevas (with adjustable straps for the toe area).  Those are my shoes. 

Because I am a walking furnace, I don't wear the sneakers very often.  My feet get so hot in them!  So the shoes of choice have been the flip flops (which have now caused a very uncomfortable callus at the junction of big toe and piggies underneath) and the Tevas, which have been my go-to shoes for a couple of years.

The Tevas are apparently strangling my feet.  The strap across the ankle seems to cause my feet to swell up.  If I wear them with out the strap fastened, no problem.  Fasten the strap and they start looking like someone stuck a valve in them and blew them up.

I'm beginning to wonder if I can continue to wear shoes at all....