Major footwear issues around here, and it's not just fall fashion week.
Basically the problem is that I have one (1) pair of shoes that I can stomach. All others bring about dizziness and motion sickness in very short order. Like, within minutes. Well, so you say, at least there's one pair of shoes that ARE working, right? Yes. You would say that. But you'd be forgetting that they are totally bare sandals . And I live in Ohio. And it's September 25th. This would not be problem in Florida. I was talking with Vince about the problem the other day, and he said, "Well, there's no rush on that." And I said, "Vince, it was 49 degrees when I left the house this morning."
Yes, that's the problem.
I thought I had this solved about a month ago, when I scored my Troentorp wooden clogs (they're wet-lasted! hand-nailed!). As these things go, I really liked the clogs. They seemed a likely success, because they are made of wood, hard and smooth. But unfortunately they are not flat. They sort of rock forward in a way that reminds me unfavorably of this horrible rocking wooden board I'm forced to stand on in vestibular therapy. They made me ill and I was back to square one.
I brought the problem up in vestibular therapy on Monday. Vince looked the shoes, looked at my feet, watched me walk. Then he said, "I have a foot man here, let's call him." He called over young Matt, the attractive foot man, who also analyzed the problem for a few minutes. He decided that Birkenstocks might be a good bet– they are a) hard, and b) a footprint that conforms to the foot. Two qualities shared by the sandals of wonder. So I tried them. I walked around in the shoe store with some on for a few minutes, and although I did feel slightly ill, I still felt it was my best bet. So I ordered some online. They arrived early in the week. Butt ugly. I mean… they looked like duck feet. Like big, big flippers . Hello, Mrs. Baggins? But I said, okay, for medical reasons I will try them. I walked around the house for ten minutes and already began to feel very dizzy. The texture! The arch! The way the adhere to my feet at every step. Not working. Then Ben saw them and said, "I FORBID you to wear these shoes!" I mean, he pulled out the "forbid" concept. Like I'm chattel? But then he cracked me up by speaking in a German accent and saying, "Try our aesthetic therapy– if you think you don't care about appearances, after our aesthetic therapy process, YOU WILL CARE."
So that was a no-go.
Today we talked about it some more in Vestibular Therapy… WHAT is making these shoes work? What magical unique combination… ? The flat hardness, the utterly smooth almost glassy texture, the way I wear them with bare feet (would any socks combined with any shoes cause the same problem?) or the way the stimulation is intermittent? They do not touch my feet for a second, then they slap my feet, giving me sudden blast of input After much discussion this morning, the current expert opinion is all of the above. (Foot man Matt is going to e-mail a foot expert in Virginia for further ideas…) My feet give me contact with the floor or ground and thus are critical to my impaired ability to balance. Muffled by socks or padded shoes of any kind, I lose a major key to staying upright and the result is dizziness. So… how to find flip-flop snow boots? Do they make those? Electric socks with these sandals? Or am I headed, god forbid, down THIS path ?
Cue hyperventilation.
Deep breath.
And foot man Matt raise another concern I hadn't thought of: how am I going to walk on the snow itself?
Okay, so now he's also trying another angle– to desensitize my feet. I have a whole new host of exercises to increase the ability of my feet to cope with textures and other input. I'm supposed to try sitting in a chair and putting my feet on various surfaces for a few seconds, towels, pillows, etc. Toe curls and slight pressure on softness. Try to just wear socks around the house in bare feet for five minutes. Maybe this way I'll be able to acclimate to some of the various shoes I have…? But it's a race against time. The forecast this week has highs in the 60s and lows in the 40s. .. …