The Feet Have It – Part I – Ganglion Cysts

Well, yes, if my feet can, they will – Have it. And, if my feet don’t get it, surely, on of my family members’ feet will. In doing my part to keep the world on its feet, I’m doing a multi-part series on odd foot ailments and what we have done for them. Part I – Ganglion Cysts is about thinking outside the box, or boot as it were.

A ganglion cyst can be very annoying. It is a weakness in membrane walls that causes lubricating fluid to fill it like a balloon. While not at all life threatening, it is indeed a pain in the foot, though it can manifest in the hand area also. Not only can you not get this knot on the top of your foot into your usual shoes, it also aches. It is a dull ache, not an earth shattering, ear splintering ouch. But, it is that kind of pain that just lingers and says “Here I am!”

One of these creatures showed up on my left foot after I had been painting at my daughter’s new house. I noticed the step stool I was using was rather uncomfortable for my size 12s, so I swapped with someone else, not that they had any smaller feet to put on it, but I am the elder after all. I did not think anything else about the foot pain using the more narrow stool had caused until the next day. Hmmmm. . . .why was my foot so sore, I thought. Well, figured it was the painting, ignored it and moved on.

You see, I don’t usually wear shoes, and examining a sore foot I guessed was beyond me, so I didn’t. It was still sore the next day, so I got out my Topricin (if you decide to buy some, use code KES097 at checkout for $5 off) and put some on. While rubbing, I may have noticed my foot was a bit swollen. Due to the estrogen dominance I was yet to know I was dealing with, swollen feet and water retention wasn’t abnormal, so I just wrote it off. Wow, that felt nice, the Topricin, massaging, pain relieving and all. Over the next day, we would do the reminder pain – Topricin application. After another 48 hours I really thought no more about it for a day or two.

Then, I noticed a dull ache, and instead of just reaching for the Topricin, I happened to actually look at my foot. I will admit a bit of shock flooded me, but not really panic. What I saw, I hadn’t witnessed before. There was a BUMP on my foot, just back of my smaller toes, where normally the bones show. I felt it, thought about it, put some more Topricin on, and figured like all things it would go away.

Next day, it was still there, so was the dull throb, and now a new friend, a second bump. Okay, if my foot is going to start looking like a mountain range, I guess I should figure out why, I thought. Online I went, to many sites, checking symptoms, stories, people blogging about foot bumps, etc. Finally, I found a name – Ganglion Cyst. We all know cysts can be naughty, nice or just irrelevant. I started looking to see which bugger this was. Well, it was mostly irrelevant other than the disturbance it caused shoe wearing.

Treatment: Ah, lovely treatment lists. They are never correct. For ganglion cyst there were two proposed treatments. The first, you guessed, was surgery, which according to all sites was mostly helpful in the short term yet very ineffective in the long run. The other treatment was called the “Bible Thump.” This is why another name for this ailment is “Bible Cyst.” Just like it implies, you smash the cyst with a Bible or other large book. That sounded a bit painful and ineffective to me. But, it did explain why massaging the foot made it feel better. The idea behind the Bible thump is to push the fluid back out of the weakened area. Massaging was a kinder, gentler method of doing so.

A strange thing happened on the way to treatment though. I decided that since the Topricin made it feel better, I’d continue that approach. It had to be as effective as the two medically proposed options, and certainly was less barbaric. So, for about a month I continued. I discovered my estrogen dominance in this time, started USP progesterone treatment, and now, 8 months later have no sign of swelling, pain or Ganglion Cysts.

Stay tuned for the next installment of “The Feet Have It” when I tell you about my experience with the mysterious vaso-spastic disorder which strikes women in their early 20s and is totally incurable . . . right.