Do you suffer from a bunion or two? What have you done that keeps it from hurting or getting worse? Orthotic shoes, toe-stretchers, sacrifices on an altar to Ferragamo?
Yes, I really have a bunion and I really want to know. No, I am not a decrepit little old lady with scary feet.
I had custom-made orthotics for a while, but they really weren’t helpful. The only thing that keeps my bunions from flaring up are wearing shoes that are (a) wide enough – and I had wide feet before the bunion, and (b) low-heeled or flat.
I wish I had better news for you, but I haven’t worn cute shoes in probably about a decade. I have to have wide-widths, and they have to be low heeled. It’s very sad. I can sometimes manage a wedge or platform heel, but I never wear them two days in a row. I like kitten heel mules for dress shoes.
That is exactly what I hoped to hear about.
{sigh} Yeah, this works for me, too. I’m in the market for a new shoe wardrobe because we’re moving from Texas to Maine: I have half a dozen pairs of comfortable sandals, but very little that’s water, snow, mud, or cold-proof. I’m contemplating special-ordering a mismatched pair, as my right foot measures 8.5B while my left is 9.5E, and it’s the bigger foot that has the bunion. It’s just a lot of money for some homely shoes.
The podiatrist I saw didn’t really have much to offer in the way of help, but I appreciated his forthrightness. He told me that I could spend a lot of money ordering products from speciality catalogs and such, but that nothing cures a bunion but surgery. 
The orthotics did help my aunt a bit, but it wasn’t such a big difference that she could wear shose that weren’t huge flats.
Surgery. Gets rid of the buggers nicely…plus, your feet look great again! 
I had the surgery and it was a resounding failure. Other than staying hi for a month off of hydrocodone it was worthless. Now my big toe where I had the bunion doesn’t bend like it should and it’s coming back again. It looks no better because of the scar. Here, I’ll shoot you guys a picture.
http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/9077/s4022500el3.jpg
These are my size 14, 23 year old feet. Pretty, huh? Obviously YMMV as maybe I had a bad podiatrist, etc. I do have a weird thing with my legs twisting that causes all the bones down to my feet to be crooked which is what caused this to begin with. Anyway, surgery didn’t work for me.
I may need the surgery eventually, but since my bunions don’t bother me at all if I wear proper footwear, I’m not rushing to do it. I face-planted yesterday while walking in sneakers… I certainly don’t need to be out in the world again wearing stilettos. God knows how many innocent bystanders might be hurt.
Well, definitely pay attention to dgrdfd’s tale. If the root cause of your bunion hasn’t been taken care of, in the long term it won’t matter what you do, that bunion will come back.
For me, it took surgery to remove the bunion and custom orthotics to solve the root problem. (One leg is just about 1/4" shorter than the other, throwing everything outta whack.) Surgery for me was a ‘day patient’ procedure: head in in the morning, get bunion lopped off before noon, discharged that afternoon and clunking about on the properly protected foot right after that. No pain meds. Only thing special I did for healing was to keep the foot elevated whenever possible (and iced down when I could). And no, I didn’t have a mild bunion either. (Still have the screw in my toe from that surgery, btw.)
And like lisacurl, the doctor I went to said that buying toe splints, etc., are just a waste of time and money. At most they may provide temporary relief, but they won’t get rid of the bunion because they can’t fix the damage that has been done to the associated bones.
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Look to the root cause- it could be as simple as a little overpronation rolling your feet inwards, or torsion of your leg bones, uneven legs, or a need for a metatarsal pad. Before surgery, try getting a good Physical Therapy evaluation, maybe they can help find the biomechanical cause. Shoes that fit without pinching toes are a must. I have found when they flare up, getting a little skin tape on the medial edge and easing them back into place can relieve them. I always use the stretchy, forgiving skin tape. Dgrdfd, do your arches get enough help?
After the surgery I was given some arch insert things. I wore them for about a year and didn’t really notice much of a difference between using them and not having them in. I no longer use them.
I still have two in my toe also. Does your toe bend? I forgot to ask my podiatrist after the surgery. After I had it I wore a boot for like a month and half and when I took it off I the toe had “locked up.” I was and still am afraid to really try to bend it. I don’t really know if the screws are there keeping it locked or if me not bending it caused it to lock up, and I just need to rework it. I really should have asked this a year and half ago when I had the surgery! However, I do realize that every surgery is different, and just because you can/can’t doesn’t mean I should/shouldn’t be able to.
It does: it isn’t like it was before surgery (I could use it like a thumb), but I can bend it at the first joint (the one that had the tip sawed off and screwed back on), and I can bend it into a curl to some degree. My only legacy from the surgery is the thin scar line (which has varying degrees of sensation amazingly enough), a spot on the top of the bone where you can feel where the screw is, and a nerve on the bottom side of my big toe (right in the middle of the middle section) that got moved around (not sure if the surgery did it or the swelling afterwards) and now serves as a ‘funny bone’ under apparently random conditions. (As in, occasionally if it gets bumped I get a lightning bolt of pain through my foot and up into my leg. Ow.)
To give you the idea of the range of motion I have in that toe, after my doc had gotten everything done but the closing up during my surgery, he checked the range of motion and was easily able to move my toe into an 90 degree angle. After closing up, that went down to about 80 degrees. I’m still roughly at that range of motion today. (My surgery was roughly 10 years ago, btw.)
He did have me manually manipulate the toe after the surgery, specially to keep scar tissue from adhering and locking up the joint. Your doctor didn’t have you do this?
Assuming your screws were put in properly, they shouldn’t be interfering with motion in your toe. (One of the first things my doctor did for my follow-up appointment was to take x-rays and verify that the screw hadn’t shifted position and wasn’t about to cause any problems.) My semi-educated WAG (IANAD, etc.) is that the scar tissue from the surgery has locked up your toe. I think a physical therapist could be helpful here, once it’s verified that those screws aren’t causing any problems.
I had surgery on one bunion, and it was a RESOUNDING failure. I had it done by a podiatrist who did the surgery all the time, but I ended up with freak complications. First, a month after the surgery, the screw he’d inserted managed to work lose and start poking out the bottom of my foot; so he had to go in and remove it. Then apparently the hole from the screw collapsed, and my entire big toe shrank a full centimeter in length! I couldn’t bend it, I got stress fractures in my 2nd and 3rd metatarsals regularly from the totally hosed biomechanics, and I was miserable, could barely walk.
After about a year I found a doctor who decided to experiment, and went in and lengthened the bone – I had to stay off it completely for two months, plus I had a metal fixator sticking out the side of my foot, and I had to turn a screw every day to lengthen the toe. So I was on crutches or in a wheelchair for nearly four months.
We ended up getting 8 mm back in length, but to this day my whole foot is screwed up. I have a lot of nerve damage from the three surgeries, so I have a combination of pain and hypersensitivity. Also, a lot of the tendons and ligaments and muscles got semi-atrophied from not being able to use them for so long, and I’ve been through multiple rounds of physical therapy to get it all working again. I have $400 custom orthotics that I have to wear, and I only have about three pairs of shoes that they’ll fit properly into so if I want to wear cute shoes, I know I’ll suffer later.
And the best part? As a result of all the limping from my foot problems, it ended up exacerbating my right knee, which I’d torn cartilage in when I was 14 but managed to live pain-free and fully useful for nearly 40 years, and I ended up needing a knee replacement a couple of months ago!
So if you have bunion surgery, DO NOT let a podiatrist do it. Find the best surgeon you can! I went to one with about 16 letters after his name for a second opinion, wondering if I had a malpractice suit on my hands, and he said everything the podiatrist had done had met the standard of care. But, of course, even a lawsuit wouldn’t give me a pain-free, properly functioning foot again. So I’ve focused on recovering, not suing, although it sure was a nice idea. I probably could have found a doctor to back me up, but it wasn’t worth the aggravation.
My recommendation? Get wider shoes, good custom orthotics, and learn to live with your bunions!
I don’t recall her ever telling me so I never did it. I bet scar tissue did form. Just to be sure we are on the same page this is the joint that bends almost none. My other one has much more bend and mobility in it. She did do the X-ray to verify that the screws were okay.
Mama Tiger, I am sorry to hear of your troubles. Once one thing goes wrong with your feet and legs everything messes up. Not to shy anyone away from surgery, but I would really not recommend it until you have tried all other options. If the surgery doesn’t go right, you can expect problems clear up to your knees or hips.
I have a friend who had a problem with her feet and decided on surgery. She initially did it for a mainly for a cosmetic change and now may end up losing a foot because one thing messed up another (and the person who performed the surgery apparently wasn’t very good). Something to think about.
I have a bunion - had it since I was about 18, and I’m in my 40’s now. When it starts to get screwy, I take a look at what I might be doing to exacerbate the problem - often my shoes have gotten old and worn, or I’m not wearing enough support for the work I’m doing, or I’m just walking on ice too much. Anything that makes my gait abnormal causes the bunion to scream.
My grandmother had surgery - left her lame. My mom is facing it. I refuse.
Just to clarify, I am not the least bit interested in surgery at the moment. My bunion will have to be much, much more painful than it is now for me to contemplate such a thing.
What I am interested in hearing about is what preventive measures y’all have taken that work or don’t work - I’m currently hearing a mixed opinion for orthotics and unanimous approval for shoes that fit properly.
When wearing closed shoes, I have taken to using one of these, which definitely results in fewer bunion-pangs than otherwise, though of course the shoe has to have room to accomodate my toes fully. I know I need more pairs of healthy shoes, but I’m not sure how to identify them, especially since I ordered these and they INSTANTLY made my bunion twinge horribly.
Any footwear recommendations?
Better yet, any particularly affordable footwear recommendations?
examines incision line Interesting differences: for comparison, my incision line looks like someone drew it on with a pen, and its proportionally a bit longer (goes just shy of the second joint in my big toe), although since your feet look like they’re bigger than mine I think that absolute length is actually about the same.
So yea, sounds like you’ll need to do some therapy on that toe to break up that scar tissue: I don’t envy you this one bit!
And to more directly answer emilyforce: because mine was caused by leg length imbalance, the only measure I can take to keep the bunion from returning is to wear the custom orthotics. If I don’t, I feel it in my knees and hips first. Well, I could have surgery to lengthen the appropriate bones in my leg but… er… no. Non-surgical methods work just fine, and if I keep an eagle eye out I can find shoes that aren’t plain ol’ sneakers that’ll fit my inserts. (I <heart> boots! I did find a pair of these on clearance however that do fit my orthotics: it’s about as close to a strappy shoe as I can get.)
And because of the nature of my bunion, it never really was the bunion that hurt: it was my knees, hips, and ankles that suffered the most, so before my orthotics the only thing I could do was simply not walk.
For finding shoes though, based on how I had to hunt for comfy stuff while my foot recovered from the surgery: you’ll really need to try on the shoes and walk around long enough to figure out if they’ll work or not. Even if the description says it has a roomy toe-box, I’ve never really seen a description that says how they’re roomy. Width? Length? Depth? Doesn’t do you any good if they’re nice and wide at the first joint of your toes, but it narrows down by the time it reaches your second joints if you have long toes.
I’ve found that at the local monthly flea market there’s a guy who sells overstock/out of season shoes from higher end stores, and most of them are ‘similar’ pairs where one shoe is a half size larger than the other. I wonder if perhaps there is someone in your area who does something similar that you can check with to see if they have full-size mismatches? Or I have seen advertised a while back a service for amputees (bear with me here) that matched up the ‘odd sized’ shoes for people. It worked by matching up people who needed a size X shoe for their left foot and a size Y for their right, with a people who needed the size Y for their left, etc. It’s a bit out there as a suggestion, and I’m not sure how to go about finding such a service, but it’s something to consider.
Dang, those are pretty! The height doesn’t squish your toes? I might have to get me some like that!
I was afraid this was the case. It makes sense. I hate shopping in person - much prefer to order over the web - but I guess I know bunion-friendly shoes are a different ball of wax. In my experience shoe salesmen are kin to used car salesmen, even at the specialty-shoe store.
Wow, that’s extremely cool - can you say whereabouts you are? I’ve only ever found this kind of service online or on private mailing lists. My taste in shoes has never been all that mainstream, so the private lists haven’t been tempting. I have come across online sellers that will sell you two different-size pairs with the second pair at only their cost, but those folks don’t have sales or economies of scale and are not cheap.
I think my bunion comes from my one foot being so much bigger than the other, and the larger having been cramped by my mid-size shoe compromises. I’ve read plenty of commentary to the effect that “all bunions come from shoes; no one got bunions before shoes were common” but felt that was a bit extreme, as well as unproveable. Nightsong, it sounds like you might be a proveable counterexample. Have you been told much about how relatively rare or common your “pathology” is? How did you find out one of your legs was shorter?
To alla y’all: When did you know you had a bunion? How did you find out?
My stepdaughter inherited her dad’s feet. She had the surgery: another resounding failure. On the other hand, that was 10 years ago, and there has probably been progress in the field.
After about 16 years seeing a podiatrist regularly, my husband’s has had significant improvement in comfort when he’s wearing shoes, and his feet look a hell of a lot better. They used to be all twisted and painful looking. He’s still not 100% comfortable, but I doubt that’s ever going to happen.
My feet are comfortable in anything from barefeet to 4-inch heels. Other parts of me I’d like to trade in, but at least I can enjoy walking.
I feel for you, emilyforce.
