Sometimes you just can't Ignore Flat Feet

Fallen arches, flat feet, pes planus, whatever you choose to call it, most people who have the condition don't really find a reason to complain (other than about the embarrassment when people see their wet footprints somewhere and they appear suspiciously shapeless). People don't usually think of flat feet as any kind of medical problem. It's just an unseen way your feet are and they can be that way as long as they don't bother you. Except that they do, at some point.

People's usually start becoming aware of the medical implications of flat feet when about the time they hit 40, their feet begin to hurt in a most uncharacteristic manner. Sometimes, it becomes difficult just to basically get from one place to another. That's when they go ask an orthopedic doctor, for the first time in their lives, about what might be done about their feet. Usually, they go expecting that all they need is a little pulling and pushing, and a bit of physiotherapy. Sometimes, things aren't too far gone, and orthotics or a brace might do the trick. For some people, choices such as these actually seem to work. But often enough, the problem can be serious enough that nothing less than the attentions of a surgeon will do.

Surgery for flat feet, as any surgeon will tell you, isn't the worst part of it. It's the healing. Healing and recuperation after surgery on a complex part of your body that is constantly moving and constantly bearing a great deal of weight, can be singularly painful and unbelievably long. You should avoid it if you can; but if you just have no arches at all, your body keeps trying to balance the abnormality out by shifting weight in the most unusual way; and it can hurt your back and your knees the way you carry yourself.

Surgery can be spectacularly complex. You need three or four separate operations on each foot. Doctors usually operate on you one foot at a time, because they don't want you to not be able to move around at all. Your co-pay should run into about $5000 too. The operation itself is called an oseotomy: and it can be kind of faint-inducing to hear about it. They take a piece of bone from a dead person, coat in your own marrow, and put it in your ankle to shape your foot differently. They saw your heel off, and screw it back on in a slightly different position. And they do all this to create the effect of an arch.

It can take up to a year to get back to living life at 100%; but you'll definitely see that it makes a great difference.