There are many reasons that I am thankful to be a massage therapist. One of the biggest reasons is the help I can give people, including myself. Having specialized in Sports Massage I have seen lots of different injuries. Most of them I have never had, thank goodness, but a couple I have had.
Mortons Neuroma is one I have dealt with on a couple of different occasions. The first occasion was with my own foot. I was doing a lot of track work outs and developed a neuroma in my right foot. If you are wondering what it feels like think hot poker in the ball of your foot right under your middle toe.
It is a very nervy feeling and is kind of like a tooth ache in that it lets up if you quit puttin pressure on it. As you can imagine that is pretty hard to do if you are running, on your feet anyway!
I looked it up, talked to my running coach and fixed it. I taped a piece of folded up napkin onto the bottom of my foot. I had cut out a hole in the middle of the napkin so that it looked like a doughnut and put the hole right on the owie place. It worked like a miracle and I was back on the road.
A couple of years later I had a client that was suffering from pain in the same place on her foot, only on the top of the foot. Her trainer had looked at it, and they could not figure out what the problem was. I took her foot and put it into plantar flexion and low and behold a big bump appeared on the top of her foot between her third and fourth toes.
I told her she had a gangleon cyst and tried to imagine how she got one of those there. Come to find out she had a "foot doctor" scrape her mortons neuroma on the bottom of her foot a couple of years earlier and the scar tissue had caused the cyst. Good ole' surgery ha?
Once they figured out what it was they went in and of course scraped it out and got rid of the cyst.
A year ago a friend of mine emailed me and said she had surgery to get rid of her mortons neuroma. She by the way went to the same "foot doctor" and he told her the only way to get rid of it was to go in and scrape away some of the tissue. Hello that only causes more scar tissue. I asked her if she had ever tried taping or any other preventitive. Nope. Nada. Bummer.
Today in my first four mile loop for my long run I got the old familiar pain in my foot. Above is my brilliant taping job. You know what worked really well? A pad! Yup I just cut a hole in it, stuck it on my foot and taped it to secure it. Ran another five miles and felt great. Like I said the things I learned in massage school are invaluable!
