Thursday, March 29, 2007

Please pray for Michael

For the last few months Michael has been complaining of pain in his feet . At first I thought it was probably the four nights a week of karate catching up with him but then I caught a glimpse of him standing without shoes or socks and knew there was a problem. Michael has had flat sort of misshapen feet since he was an infant , however the family doctor has always maintained that as long as he could walk , it would not be anything to worry about. Now, however he is in pain and his feet are appearing very misshapen. I knew there was call for alarm. I made an appointment with a podiatrist and he went yesterday. This particular podiatrist is a train fanatic and has his office full of pictures and even a running O scale train that runs around his waiting room. Michael was most impressed and very much at ease taking it all in. Soon we were back in a room and the doctor was looking at Michael's feet as Michael sat. the doctor seemed to wonder why Michael was having pain until he asked him to stand. At that point the doctor looked at me and said Oh No, lets get x rays. We did and a few minutes later the doctor came back. " His feet are so bad, they don't even resemble human feet " were the first words out of his mouth. He showed me the x rays and shook his head. " I don't know where to start" was the doctors next comment. He then explained many problems and stated that this was the worst he had ever seen and being only thirteen, this was unheard of. The doctor immediately used tape and an insole looking material to tape one foot but it wasn't enough. He said that he highly doubted that orthotics would help at all and started asking questions. When he asked about sports and we told him about karate, he looked down. We were given two options. First would be that Michael should quit karate,and we would try orthotics. OK, first of all quitting karate for Michael is not an option that he is willing to consider and secondly, this option would only work for a couple years maximum and then he would probably not be able to walk at all. The second option was surgery. We were told that we could wait a while but the longer that we wait, the more irreversible damage could occur. Michael wants to wait until after he tests in May but we are not deciding until next week when we go back to the doctors . Next week we will discuss if the taping of the foot has helped at all and if so if we can buy time before surgery or if we should do it ASAP. Either way, surgery is inevitable and a three month recovery is optimistic so please remember Michael in your prayers.