Persevering Momma

Taking The Day One Spoon At a Time

One Step at a Time… My AFOs

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Charcot Marie Tooth FootMoving one step at a time and here is part two.  I spoke about my orthotics just the other day and now I want to share with you a little about my AFOs.  Well, here is another picture of my foot to start off with.  I showed you the side view and how much of an arch I have on my feet.  With CMT it is common to have really high arches or completely flat.  My toes are the other issue with my feet.  I have the start of hammer toes.  My little toes have almost no toe nail and it’s really hard to cut because my toe wrap up around it.  My middle toes have been curling a lot more.  My feet are about a size 9 US woman’s shoe and I suspect if I were to have surgery They would be a 10 at least just from lowering my arch. If you can’t tell I really need to cut my toenails. Lol. I always wait until they are pretty long because I find it easier to cut them.  My boyfriend is amazing though and cuts them for me because he is such a sweety!

AFONow on to my AFOs.  I have had a variety of AFOs (ankle foot orthoses) over the years.  My first pair were in high school and there the hard white plastic that covered the whole back of my leg, ankle, and bottom of my foot.  These did not work for me.  They made my achilles tendons hurt really bad because my foot was fighting the AFO since I am still pretty strong.  The second set of AFOs that I had lasted me two years and were Carbonfiber Blue Rockers which are prefabricated and given to me off the shelf and had orhotics that sat on top of them.  My current AFOs pictured here are called Noodle AFOs and these ones are fit specifically to me.  I love these new ones.  The cuffs at the top have foam padding on them against my leg and the rest is just made of carbonfiber.  My second favorite feature is the straps.  These straps have foam padding on them to go against the back of my leg instead of just velcro like I had before.

AFOs

 

Overall I really love these AFOs because they help me to be more stable when I walk and they help to prevent me from dragging my toes while I walk.  They also help to prevent me from slapping my feet down hard when I walk. The only downfall to wearing them is that I always have to readjust when it comes to driving because pushing the pedal feels completely different without them than with them.

I am curious what do you all think?  Would you like to see videos of me walking with and without the braces as well as see what sort of movement I have left in my feet?

One Step at a Time… My Orthotics

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CMT

I have been meaning to sit down and give you all the low down on a part of my life that I usually keep pretty quiet about.  I have been working hard to be more open and willing to talk about my Charcot Marie Tooth (CMT) on a personal level and not just rattling off statistics and medical terminology that just goes over most peoples heads (including mine sometimes).  You can see my oh so beautiful foot posted above.  I will admit to you all right her that I hate my feet.  I hate how they look, how much they hurt and burn, and I hate that I stand on so little of the bottom of my foot.  I don’t have your average foot and I know no one has perfect feet, but this has always been a bit of an eyesore to me.  I have high arches that in little slip on shoes and sandles is always up higher than the sides of the shoes, and I have the start of hammer toes that cause them to all be all curled up.

Orthotic

Because I walk on such a little potion of my foot.  The first step was to get me orthotics that will support my foot and make it so that I do not have to put more weight on the outsides of my feet.  These blue orthotics pictured on the left are amazing.  They help to aleviate a lot of pain and make it so that I can stand and walk a lot longer than without them.  The downfall to these is that I cannot put them in a lot of shoes.  It takes a lot of shoe shopping to find a cute pair that they fit in.  On top of that dress shoes are a big no-no.  There are very few dress shoes that can fit my orthotics in them.  Right now all I have are these cute blue tennis shoes! I don’t think I have ever had tennis shoes that are quite this cute before!  The orthotics reach up and cradle my arches which is nice because it helps to alleviate strain and pulled tendons across it.

Just using my orthotics is real helpful, but I have no propreoception in my feet.  That means I cannot tell where my feet are in space.  For example my doctors tested this by having me close my eyes and they would move my foot one way and ask where they moved it (up, down, right, or left).  It’s kind of fun to do! You can try it out.  Just have someone move your foot for you with your eyes closed and guess! I would love to hear all about it!!! Lol.