carbuncles

I’d like to preface this post by stating that our family has been afflicted with the horrible malady of bunions.  These things are a bitch, let me tell you.  Especially for runners.  Finding the perfect running shoe as of late has been virtually impossible, so much so that I have been forced to alter the shoe so as not to damage the bunion any further. For now, I am going to call the bunions “carbuncles,” in honor of my late grandfather.  If you actually look up the definition of “carbuncle,” the dictionary will tell you that it is a boil on the foot, not a bunion.  Why my grandfather chose to call the many bunions in our family carbuncles, I will never know.  But I can just picture him yelling out in his old, senile age of 96 “look at that carbuncle you got there!”  Usually he was referring to my father’s, not mine, since at that point I had luckily not yet developed one.  My father’s is pretty damn bad too, I must say.  Anyway, regardless, recently I’ve been attempting to buy running shoes, to no avail.  A few weeks ago, I ventured over to Fleet Feet in Adams Morgan.  Love that place.  It is run by the Fenty family, and the son of Mr. Fenty (not our Mayor, but Adrian Fenty’s brother perhaps?) went on and on about how great this particular version of Asics was.  Hmm, I have never tried Asics.  So I put them on, and really, I felt like I was walking on a cloud.  However, the bunion issue did worry me.  I went in with the intent of buying a pair of Nike’s which I knew for a fact did not irritate the bunion.  When I relayed this bunion fear to Son Fenty, he replied that I should not worry about it, since he could simply cut the overlay that was agitating the bunion if I started to feel any pain.  Naturally, a week or so in, I felt pain.  Here is a picture of the normal foot, so this is what the beautiful Asics looked like pre-cutting the overlay to hell:

normal foot

Look at those beauties.  Love that shoe!  But, not so much anymore.  Bunion started hurting so I brought them back and Mr. Fenty cut some of the overlay away.  Of course, this led to the mesh of the shoe coming apart, but I really didn’t care so long as it didn’t hurt this damn carbuncle of mine any further.  I tried to run again this weekend, post minor cutting of the overlay.  Honestly, I have never felt so much pain…so I took it back to Mr. Fenty yesterday and this is what we ended up with:

abnormal foot

Seriously, you may as well just have cut the entire overlay off the shoe.  I am in the store and he’s cutting away, and I’m really just laughing my ass off, out loud.  Again I ask, “who does this happen to?”  So, this is what we are left with.  He cut off all the mesh in that area as well as all the overlay.  If this doesn’t work, I don’t know what will.  The beautiful thing about the Fenty’s and Fleet Feet is that if it still continues to hurt me, I can bring them back and get a totally new pair of another shoe that hopefully will not hurt this carbuncle any further.  For the record, Pacers in Clarendon wouldn’t even let me wear the shoes outside once and then return them (DC>Arlington, example A).  The last thing I am trying to do is get surgery on the thing, so if I feel the slightest pain again, I’m bringing these babies right back.  Anyway, I’m glad they are so accommodating.  Only I would have the store cut the shoes to shreds, and then return them.  Pretty typical.