Bac chosach on the mend

I spend a lot of time on my feet. 

I'm a walker, and for the last couple of years, week in week out, I've averaged seven miles a day. Walking is my thing. It lets me clear my mind and get away from obsessing on the increasingly disastrous news. It gets me out, and communing with as much nature as you're going to find in the city. On the majority of my walks, I'm doing some circuits of the Boston Public Garden - my front yard, or walking under the canopy on the Commonwealth Mall, or enjoying the calm of the Charles River as much as I can while dodging mine fields full of Canada goose turds.

I've always been a walker, but I became more every-day-regular (and more step-counting conscious) once my sister Trish gifted me with a Fitbit seven years ago.

Admittedly, I've become something of a walking obsessive. 

I started out getting 10,000 steps a day (a bit over four miles). I then upped the ante to five daily miles, then six. So seven? Why the hell not?

But once I settled on my Lucky Seven, I decided it didn't need to be daily, but, rather, a weekly average. As long as I got 49 miles in per week, I was good as gold. So I started front-loading, getting at least ten miles in on Sunday and Monday and putting these and any other extra miles I accumulated against later days in the week. Most weeks, by Saturday, I only needed two or three miles to hit my weekly goal.

For almost as long as I can remember, I've had flat feet, which was diagnosed by the school nurse when I was in grammar school.

It wasn't that big a deal. All part of the foot structure I inherited form my father: Long? ✔ Narrow? ✔ Flat? ✔ 

My father's flat feet had kept him out of the Army - he'd tried to enlist right after Pearl Harbor - but they were good enough to let him join the Navy, where he served from 1942-1946.

My own flat foot floogie meant that I had to do some exercises (walk back and forth in the hallway, on the sides of my feet, with the toes curled in), and wear supportive shoes (StrideRite saddle shoes) when the feet of everyone else in my world were shod in Weejun loafers. (Finally, half way through high school, my parents gave in and let me get a pair of Weejuns.)

Off an on, thanks to those flat feet, I've experienced occasional foot pain, which I've treated by wearing orthotics and/or a juttering foot massage device and/or warm foot soaks and/or rolling my poor tootsies on one of the several foot rollers I've acquired over the years. My favorite is the snappy silver-and-blue GoFit, which you keep in the freezer until needed. When I'm going on a trip, I always pack my Vermont Country Store wooden foot roller. Not as effective/soothing as the GoFit, but it does the trick.

Over the years, I've had occasional foot problems like plantar fasciitis and aching ankles, which I've taken care of PRN with some combo of exercise, massaging, soaking, rolling, bracing.

But mostly, things run walk smoothly, and I get those daily walks in.

A couple of weeks ago, I had an eleven-mile Sunday, followed by a ten-mile-plus Monday. And on that ten-mile-plus Monday, I was on my feet for six hours volunteering at St. Francis House.

Nothing out of my ordinary.

Tuesday was a beautiful day, and I decided to knock off a few morning miles along the paths of the Public Garden. 

After a mile or two, something gang aft agley, and I couldn't put any weight on my right foot.

Nothing had happened. I hadn't stumbled, tripped on a brick, twisted my ankle. But there I was, about 700 feet from home, trying to figure out how to get there without calling an Uber, or my brother Rick to drive over from Charlestown and pick me up. 

But with a combination of hopping and foot dragging, I made it into the house where I immediately ordered up a consult with Dr. Google.

It could be a hairline fracture. It could be tendonitis. 

Neither of those options made me happy, as they both called for 6-8 feet to recover,

I put in more detailed symptoms - where it hurt, level of pain, etc. - and Dr. Google suggested it might be something I'd never heard of: tarsal tunnel syndrome, the ankle equivalent of carpal tunnel. It happens to people with flat feet who overdo it with the walking and standing. 

Googling brought me to a YouTube of Dr. Jo demonstrating exercises for tarsal tunnel. 

I went through the series, and also did icing and foot elevation

The next morning, I as still dragging, but my foot felt better and I could definitely put some weight on it. 

But I didn't want to do it any harm, so I Ubered over to Mass General, where I needed to do a blood draw for my annual checkup. 

Throughout the week, I did those Dr. Jo exercises, iced and elevated my foot, and popped an NSAID so I could get a painless night's sleep.

I ran a couple of errands, wearing an ankle brace and even using my cane - an item I had for no reason in particular other than prescience ordered a couple of months ago - but mostly I stayed off my feet. I also stayed off my Fitbit, but I'm guessing my daily average plummeted from seven miles to something more closely approximating 700 feet.

By the weekend, I was a bit limpy, but nothing too terrible.

At my checkup last Tuesday, I had the ankle on my checklist to ask about. My doctor did a quick examination and told me that my diagnosis (tarpal tunnel syndrome) was likely correct, but that, to be on the safe side, I should get the foot x-ray, as there might be a hairline facture. She also advised me to keep doing what I've been doing, and slowly get back to the seven mile walking regime. But she suggested never doing two power-walk days in a row, especially if they're accompanied by a six hour standing-on-my-feet volunteering stint. 

Fortunately, my doctor is affiliated with MGH, and her office is a block away from the MGH X-ray clinic, so I scooted over there and they took me right away.

Within in a couple of hours, the results were in: no fracture.

All good news, as a fracture foot might have put me in a boot, and postponed my getting back to walking and volunteering. Plus I'm going to Ireland in a couple of weeks and will want to do a bit o' walking while I'm there. So I didn't want to be there with bum hockies.

Bum hockies, you may be asking?

This is what my father called bad feet. At least that's what we thought he was saying when he made a remark like "too bad that poor kid has bum hockies," when referring to Sean, a neighbor kid who had foot problems. 

I've never heard anyone other than my father use this expression, so I figured it was either made up - he had a few (my favorite being gayyahaddy,* what he yelled, for example, when he wanted to shoo away a dog that was about to take a dump in our backyard) - or was some sort of corruption of an Irish word. (One of those words, most commonly used by my grandmother, was "streely," which she used to describe a girl's long hair that she considered unkempt. Streely comes from streel, Irish for a slattern.)

But from whence cometh bum hcokies?

Having done a bit of sleuthing, I'm guessing it was some corruption of the Irish word for foot, chosach, which is kinda sorta pronounced kinda sorta like hockie Or that was the way we heard it. There's also bac chosach, which means lame or otherwise bum foot. So I'm guessing that's where it came from.

(My sister Trish's theory of the case is that "hockies" comes from "hock", as in ham hock. She may be right, but I prefer my theory.)

Anyway, my bac chosach is on the mend. 

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*When my father was a kid, there was a neighborhood grocery store run by an Armenian immigrant. When he wanted to chase loitering kids away, he would holler at them to "gayyahaddy" - fractured English for "get the hell out of here."