BootsnAll Travel Community

About a month ago I was delivering pizza, making money for my next trip (South America?) when, due to my ill-fitting boots and my tendency to hop onto narrow surfaces (a curb in this case), I fractured my 5th metatarsal (outside base of the foot).

The only good thing about his injury is that it happened at work...no health insurance but workers comp has the ER visit covered.

By my estimates I've walked about 2000 miles over the last 4 years between the AT and Europe. In all that time I've worn my favorite brand of shoes. They're comfortable, they fit me well, and after a day of seeing the sights my feet don't hurt. If it ain't broke, well, I just had to wear some boots and see if it could be, huh?...Curses.

Dear shoes, why did I forsake you for boots? Style? Fashion? Durability? You'd taken me so far with so little problems!

In all seriousness, take care of your feet! You have no idea how awesome it is to be able to walk until you can't do it.

At least recovery is in sight. The cast came off yesterday and I can do this zombie-like shuffle gait and while it's enough to go to the fridge and get a beer without crutches, I still can't forsee any trips for the next couple months.

At this point all I want to do is go on a short walk in the night and enjoy the cool fall air.

Damn boots.

Awwww.... At least you've got a sense of humor about the whole thing!!

Your story brings to mind one of mine... I was traveling in Peru and Bolivia and ended up with typhoid. I was miserable. I mean M-I-S-E-R-A-B-L-E. I got some medicine and started feeling quite a bit better - for a few days anyway.

Turns out they gave me the dosage for a small Peruvian woman and I'm a 6-foot behemoth, so it wasn't a high enough dosage for me.

So - the typhoid comes back with a vengeance. And then I slipped on the stairs to my hotel and (I'm quite certain) broke my foot. Talk about miserable!!

I went out to try to find help and ended up in the bazaar and my blasted food hurt sooooo bad and I needed a place to sit down but there wasn't anyplace and then I saw this sign: Ears pierced free with purchase of earrings. I had NO intention of getting my ears pierced, but dayum - that chair looked nice!!!

I limped out a while later with two new earrings in my ears.

You have my sympathy. I cracked(not broke) a very small bone in my foot when I was 12. You could barely see the fracture on the X-ray. I was in cast for 3 months and on crutches for 6 months. It was another 6 months before I could walk normally, and yet another 6 months before I was 100% again. Foot injuries are nasty!

I sooooo understand your pain.

I didn't have a broken foot bone but about 12 years ago when I was in Vienna I was wearing a pair of shoes with a thin sole. As I stepped down from the tram oneday I landed on the edge of a cobblestone. It smarted a bit but I kept on. A few weeks later I found out that I had damaged the nerve between 3rd and 4th toes and the smallest amount of walking would make it balloon out. I wore specially made orthotics for the next ten years (and could not wear high heels of any kind - grrrrr) until the nerve regrowth became so large that no orthotic could stop the inflammation. That is when I was finally able to have the section of nerve cut out and I have been wearing high heels as much as possible ever since.

I know that the nerve will eventually grow in a clumped mass again in the future so I am making the most of my high-heel wearing days!! Foot injuries are NOT COOL.

In September of 1991 I did a nasty triple fracture of my left ankle. Going down the companionway of a sailboat I missed the second step and went all the way to the cabin sole, landing with my foot sideways. Not sure if the gin and tonics and champagne I'd been drinking was a factor.

Spent a week in hospital after surgery to put in a plate and 13 pins. Spent six weeks in a cast, then graduated to one of those black and grey wookie-foot walking casts that you can remove.

The reason this is germain here: I never asked the doctor whether I could go on my planned sailing trip to the BVI in November. Arriving on the boat in Tortola, I pulled off the hot walking cast and left it off for the duration. I'd had an x-ray the week before and knew that two of the three fractures were mended and the third was nearly so. One doesn't walk around all that much on a sailboat, either.

My friends threatened to send a photo of me sitting on a windsurfer wearing scuba fins to my doctor.

The ankle is long healed, although the scars are still there. Due to persistent physical therapy in the year that followed the accident I have nearly the same flexibility in it as in the other one (and I still do the flexes regularly out of habit).

So there is a bright light -- but I agree, foot injuries are awful.

Mia