Slice of Chaotic Life

The daily life of a celibate middle-aged man.

Feet and sleep

Posted by Itlandm on October 19, 2011

It’s been more than a week, perhaps two, that I have not done my daily long walks. I still walk half an hour a day simply by going to work, as there is a quarter of an hour’s walk to and from the bus both ways, but that is not exactly impressive. I did that already back when I developed pre-diabetes.

The reason for my non-walking is that the skin under my left foot has cracked – first in the front, now at the heel – making it quite painful to walk on. I’ve treated this with foot baths and now salve and compress on the heel, and things are getting better. I took a walk this evening, but much shorter than before.

One suspicious coincidence is that I seem to go to bed later when I don’t walk, whereas the opposite should been true, since I have time to do the same other things earlier. I can only assume it is because I don’t feel as sleepy in the night when I haven’t taken a long walk during the day. But I do feel sleepy in the morning.

If all goes well, my vacation begins in a week and a half, on October 31. Basically it is set to cover all of NaNoWriMo (the month formerly known as November) and weeks that include any part of NaNoWriMo. I have taken this month off for several years, and one interesting side effect is that I tend to synchronize completely to American time when it comes to waking and sleeping hours. I wonder if that will still happen if I take long walks each day? But the future is anyway not something we can take for granted, although I admit I tend to do it without thinking, even at an age of over 50. An age which at the moment seems to manifest mostly in the skin on my feet.

I assume unsolicited advice will be forthcoming as usual when a human mentions any kind of health challenge. ^_^

I should probably mention that although my feet are not happy, I am. But reading about happy people is not very emotionally engaging, is it?

6 Responses to “Feet and sleep”

  1. Kristi said

    Well, Magnus, I consider your writing about things like this something of a solicitation, so my commenting on and/or making recommendations for your help is, in a sense, solicited. Therefore I am not going to be upset by the crack about “unsolicited advice” and am going to proceed with what I would have said anyway:

    People with tendencies toward diabetes, as I am sure you know, are vulnerable to problems with their feet, especially cracking of the skin on the bottoms of the feet and the toes, that do not heal properly and require serious medical intervention. There are many good products available without a prescription that help this situation. You mentioned that you’re using a salve now. That is excellent. There is a product here (can’t remember its name right off the bat, but I will find it) that is actually marked as something good for diabetic foot care. I hadn’t noticed that until I was on my second tube of the substance, which was the BEST foot cream for just generally keeping my feet from turning hoof-like as I age. It softens callused (sp?) areas, and it just generally thins thick skin and adds resilience and elasticity to areas of thinner skin. It has a lot of mint and other very nice-smelling herbs in it. Although I am sure that the rubbing and massaging of the foot itself during the application of the salve is helpful, the salve itself works better than any foot-specific lotions or creams I’ve ever had. I think Jenna must have absconded with it, because I’m not finding it. Of course, now that I can’t find it my feet are beginning to gross me out.

    Have you ever had a pedicure from a professional? It seems like something completely ridiculous at first, if you are like me. Most women love to go and get their nails (even on their feet) done, etc., but until I’d experienced one I just was too grossed out for words. People handling my feet? Whether strangers or local people, I was just completely against that. But once I had one, and during that one I asked many, many questions, I saw them completely differently. My friend Tammy, who gave me my first pedicure, said that it was NOT gross, although sometimes when she went to the retirement homes (such as they are — not very good, as a rule) the people had not been able to care for their own feet for years and it took quite a bit of willpower to just get it done. Men, too, have them. She even said, specifically, that people with type 2 diabetes actually NEED them so that they don’t get slow-healing, easily-infected sores, cracks or cuts that they didn’t notice on their feet. Such things can literally cost a person some toes, or even sometimes an entire foot. AND, she said, it was such a good measure to prevent expensive damage to the feet that many insurance companies would actually pay for a pedicure every month for people diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.

    Hopefully you aren’t there yet, but if you could bring yourself to have your feet cared for in such a way, I have to imagine you would reap great benefits. Especially since you like and need to walk so much.

    So . . . sorry for all the recommendations. I’m sorry if they seem silly. But if I didn’t care, I wouldn’t worry about the condition of your feet!

  2. Itlandm said

    I am not entirely unaware of the diabetes angle, what with my other actually losing a whole foot and some of the attached leg after some years of diabetes. Which is one of the many reasons why I intend to outwalk it.

    Recommending specific products is pointless, as the pharmaceutical markets in Norway and the USA are completely different. The same products have different names, and importing them is generally prohibited if they are prescription and expensive if they are not. It is more useful to learn the active ingredients, if any.

  3. Kristi said

    Oh no!! I didn’t know your mother had lost any of her extremities! How horrible, and how stupid of me to think to tell you of this problem!

  4. Kristi said

    It is simply that we consider you part of the family, and since you are too far for us to keep an eye on you, I worry. Take care of your feet, obviously.

  5. Itlandm said

    No matter how close your friends, you can hardly be expected to keep track of the limbs of their relatives you have never met. It would be an unreasonable requirement! Anyway, I didn’t actually have diabetes last we checked, just “pre-diabetes”, which is kind of like calling the common cold a “pre-pneumonia”. There is a risk, but it is like 10% per year, and that’s with the normal lifestyle. I have an appointment in December for a new check, but so far there are no signs of actual diabetes, such as excessive thirst.

  6. Kristi said

    The same sort of thing is in our family. Both my paternal grandmother and my father’s paternal grandmother had late-onset diabetes, and my father teeters around the edge of diabetes enough that he takes medication for it. Since I had gestational diabetes with both the boys, I am fairly careful about watching for the signs. Still, pedicures could be helpful to you and your feet, whether pre-diabetes/diabetes occurs or not. Feet are important!

Leave a Reply to Kristi Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *