In This Article:
Mike’s Story…Maybe Yours Too??
“I don’t really remember when it started.
It wasn’t sudden. Maybe a little twinge when I first got out of bed,
but in the beginning it went away quickly, so I didn’t think much of it.
Had I known what was coming, maybe I would’ve reacted differently.
Now it feels like I’ve been in pain forever.”
Michael, a married 36 year old contractor, has 3 active children, with parents, in-laws and siblings all living near-by. It’s a full, busy life, but Mike is losing out on it more and more every day.
It starts with his first step each morning. Mike’s been in pain for 4 months now – long enough to instinctively wince just before his foot hits the floor as he gets out of bed. He knows that first step is always a killer.
Mike mentally sorts through what he HAS to do today, and crosses the rest off the list. He’ll get through work and stop by the grocery store on his way home.
His pain is milder mid-day but intolerable by evening, so he’ll blow off the BBQ at his brother’s house tonight. Mike thinks everyone’s tiring of his using heel pain to beg off being with family and friends, so he’ll invent a different excuse to cover for the real reason he’ll stay home alone.
His pain is exhausting.
Mike’s becoming a little quick tempered at work; his stress level is rising. Not good. He needs his job.
At home, the kids seem to be louder than usual, his wife, a little more demanding somehow, and frustrated that he doesn’t do more around the house. He’s irritated as well, but too tired to argue, so just quits talking at all. Chronic pain will do that to a person.
He gets off his feet as soon and as often as he can, instead of going to his son’s ballgame, or to dinner with his wife, or doing any of a long list of things he’d like to do. He can’t miss work. But he does miss out on fun. On life. Every single day. It’s depressing.
Nothing’s Worked
Mike tried all the self-help advice he could find online but it didn’t really work. He saw his family physician too, but that surprisingly didn’t help either. It was a disappointment he didn’t expect.
Sometimes the exercises, heel cups, night splints, ice water bottle rollers and such lessen the pain a bit, but it’s never CURED. Keeping at the self-help exercises gets harder every day too. It’s tough to continue when there’s no real relief in sight.
His heel pain seems to get progressively worse as time goes on.
Chronic Heel Pain Won’t “Cure” Itself
Mike’s right. Heel pain usually gets worse over time. And the worse it gets, the longer it goes on, the harder it is to treat. Pain that goes on for more than 2 months or so becomes increasingly more difficult to resolve, and self-help care often stops being effective.
In 3-4 months (sometimes less), your condition is usually chronic.
Once your heel pain becomes chronic, it won’t go away if you just “give it time” to heal. Here’s the sad truth: There may not be anything you can do to solve chronic heel pain all by yourself, no matter how hard you try.
Click on the image
Side Effects
While you’re trying to fix chronic heel pain by yourself, it may actually be getting worse and worse. If self-care hasn’t significantly reduced your heel pain in 2 weeks, it is not likley to do so. Continuing with self-care after that can actualy create a chronic heel pain condition.
If you finally find effective physician care after all that time goes by, it can cost more to fix and will probably take longer too. Meanwhile, you’ll continue to suffer from the pain, which may cause problems beyond just painful feet.
Chronic heel pain can cause debilitating emotional pain, with wide-reaching effects on you, family, friends and work-life. The longer heel pain continues, the more devastating emotional and physical effects it has on everyday life and overall health.
Painful feet affect overall well-being more quickly and deeply than people might realize. Feet are incredibly sensitive. Your feet have more nerve endings per square centimeter than any other part of your body. That’s why foot pain can impact your life so quickly.
Diminished job performance, frustration, anxiety, anger, lack of energy, inability to complete chores or handle the kids, depression, feelings of isolation, are all normal reactions to chronic pain. Chronic pain threatens your job, your family, your friends, and possibly even your life.
Chronic pain is nothing to mess with. No normal, healthy person can tolerate constant pain for very long, without suffering emotional stress. Lacking successful treatment, a life crippled by pain may be the only outcome.
The Truth about Self-Help Cures
There is no lack of self-help information on the internet for the “treatment” of heel pain. Some of it is actually true. And some of the advice is pretty good.
And there is no lack of online retail products for sale, claiming to cure heel pain. Some of them are helpful too, IF they address what’s actually causing your heel pain.
With all the info and products available to “cure” it, why do 2 million people every year still wind up with heel pain that remains un-healed and chronically painful?
Here’s the TRUTH about heel pain, the real reason so much unsuccessfully treated heel pain exists, the secret the DIY sites, self-help advisers and home-treating product sellers don’t tell you about chronic heel pain:
Not everyone’s heel pain has the same cause, so it may not respond to “cookie-cutter” treatment. The reason YOU have heel pain may be different than your friend’s, or wife’s or co-worker’s source of heel pain.
One-size-fits-all solutions (the online self-help variety, friend advice, or even cookie cutter physician treatment plans, including my self-care Healing Plan) won’t solve your heel pain if the solution doesn’t treat the REAL source of that pain.
And the longer your heel pain goes untreated, the less effective the DIY, self-treatment and self-care products become, until nothing you do works anymore.
The good news is, even if you have “tried everything” but failed to resolve your heel pain, it doesn’t mean you just have to live with it. In most cases, you can be successfully treated with conservative care and reclaim your life.
Imagine what your life could be like
if you fixed your heel pain
and never suffered from it again.
The Secret to Fixing Heel Pain
The secret to fixing heel pain is
- Getting a Correct Diagnosis
- Treating It Quickly
Most heel pain is due to Plantar Fasciitis. However, other conditions have very similar symptoms, and some of them should never be self-treated. So, before you attempt to self-treat your heel pain, know why you have it.
If your heel pain is due to plantar fasciitis, and you want to try to treat it yourself, do it soon, and diligently. Once plantar fasciitis becomes chronic (somewhere between 3 weeks and 2 months), it’s a whole, much more difficult situation, and you won’t solve it with self-care (there is always the very rare exception, but the odds aren’t good that you’ll be that exception).
If your heel pain hasn’t resolved with DIY care, or even if you’ve gone to a doctor without relief, please don’t give up. You don’t have to live with chronic heel pain.
There is hope.
Successful heel pain treatment often requires the experience, knowledge, skill and tools only available with care from a heel pain specialist. These tools, skills, experience and knowledge are never found online, and possibly not even with inexperienced or non-specialist practitioners.
Dr. K.G. Gauntt, DPM, a heel pain specialist in Hillsboro and Newberg, OR, has successfully treated thousands of heel pain cases over his 30 years in practice. He has a comprehensive understanding of the condition, vast experience in successful care, the tools needed to deliver results and the skills to use those tools.
His care is personalized to YOUR condition, your body and your lifestyle. You won’t find this combination everywhere.
When to See Dr. Gauntt
- If you’ve had heel pain for more than a month
- If you don’t have the time nor desire to wade through months of self care regimens to see if they will work
- If you need to get back to your life quickly
- If you’re tired of being in pain every day
- If your quality of life is affected by heel pain
- If you’ve tried everything you know, but still have heel pain
As complicated as heel pain treatment can seem, Dr. Gauntt, in his ever-present resolve to find the real source of his patient’s heel pain, sometimes finds the cause of chronic heel pain can be the simplest of reasons.
Heel Pain Relief Magic
Just because your heel pain has gone on a long time, or is debilitating, the solution may not be as complicated as you might think.
“I had a patient come into the office after many months of intense, unrelenting heel pain”, says Dr. Gauntt. “He was a driver, in his car most of the day. Turns out he had this huge wallet he carried around in his back pocket. He sat on that wallet all day long. The wallet pushed on a nerve in just the right place to cause him unrelenting and intense heel pain. It was a quick office visit. I told him to take the wallet out of his pants pocket. No more pain. Case closed”.
Of course, not every case is resolved with one sentence. But you can be assured that Dr. Gauntt will do everything humanly possible to find the TRUE source of your heel pain and provide cost-effective solutions that fit the demands your lifestyle presents.
How is Dr. Gauntt Different from other Physicians?
If you’ve had any experience with the current healthcare system, you know that many, many physicians, as well meaning and caring as they are, have overwhelming demands on their time and attention, and medical decisions are often dictated by hospital system accountants. Care is reduced to cookie-cutter treatment. Not the physician’s fault, to be sure. They are as frustrated as their patients.
Dr. Gauntt doesn’t play in that sandbox. He treats all of his patients as if they were his family. He loves finding the real cause of medical problems.
Dr. Gauntt’s been in practice long enough to have pretty much seen everything; he’s not likely to be surprised at what he finds as the source of your heel pain. He knows what treatment works and what doesn’t.
Your care options will be a decision you and he make together.
Fixing Heel Pain: Getting Immediate Relief
Dr. Gauntt has the tools to offer quick relief from pain, while addressing the long term solution to your heel pain problem.
“We have a number of options to achieve pain relief quickly”, Dr. Gauntt explains. “Patients sometimes ask if I give cortisone injections, because they’ve heard that cortisone tears ligaments in patients. This isn’t true. Overuse and misuse of cortisone injections may have that effect. Judicious use, as performed in my office, doesn’t endanger the patient. And, of course, we have more than one option to ensure patients are pain free quickly.”
What to Do Next?
If you suffer from heel pain, please call our office right away at 503-648-1713, 503-538-0466 or 503-292-9252 to set up an appointment, or make an appointment online. We’ll get you in to see Dr. Gauntt quickly, and you can be on your way back to the life you want.
What happened to Mike?
Mike’s a pretty stubborn guy by nature, and with all the failed attempts to fix his heel pain, it took him a while to finally give in to his wife’s pleas (and his brother’s nagging) to try getting help again.
Eventually he found his way to our office. The true underlying reason for Mike’s pain was quickly found, and his acute pain was relieved on the very first visit.
It took a few months for his heel pain to be resolved completely, but Mike is back to health now, and back to his life. He has a new appreciation for what’s important.
He won’t waste his time trying to muscle through agonizing physical pain again, whether it’s his feet, back or anything else. His family is more than relieved to have him back to his usual self.
Life is good again.
Others Who are Free from Heel Pain
“Nine months of extreme foot pain, then saw Dr. Gauntt and after ONE VISIT I HAVE NO MORE PAIN! What a blessing he is! EXCELLENT DOCTOR!!”
“Just wanted to let you know that my feet are doing good and I thank you so much for your help when I was so concerned and worried about the situation. Also-please know that I’m sure I speak for all of your patients when I say – you are so appreciated.”
Imagine Living Pain Free: Get Relief Now!
If you’re in pain, please call our office and arrange to see Dr. Gauntt. Don’t spend your valuable time in pain, missing out on what makes life fun and meaningful.
Get relief from your heel pain, right now. We can help.
Call us at (503) 648-1713, (503) 538-0466 or 503-292-9252 or CLICK HERE to set up an appointment online.
