The leg bone’s connected to the knee bone; the knee bone’s connected to the thigh bone; the thigh bone’s connected to the hip bone…
My new doctor sang out merrily as I stared back at him, an unfamiliar loss for words my immediate reaction. This is what one could expect from an innovative branch of medicine? The cover of the Magazine Section of the New York Times had assured me the new division of orthopedics was my birthright—that I owed it to myself, if I’d been in chronic pain for months, visited all the standard physicians and followed advised protocols but was still in pain, to see a Sports Medicine Doctor. YES! Rang out in my head, as I checked each disorder affirmatively. And there was no doubt the pain at the bottom of my foot was still there, making it almost impossible to walk now and affecting my psyche as well as my health. I owe it to myself! How wonderfully proactive my decision made me feel, but the handsome young doctor’s diagnosis didn’t. He must have noted the depth of despair I’d sunk to by the murky film across my eyes.
“I don’t follow you,” I said, dully. “What’s the connection?”
“Just that!” he answered with a gleeful chuckle. “The connections are everything, and your foot trouble comes from tight back muscles.”
“I don’t follow,” I whispered, aware of the awkward echo . He seemed delighted with the progress our communication was making, while I was wondering how to escape the impasse.
“You know that old song, don’t you? Knee bone’s connected to the thigh bone…”
“Sure…some of it anyway…I think…” I was pretty sure this wasn’t going anywhere I wanted to, and started to slip off the examining table and reach for my sneakers.
“Okay, so the point is everything’s connected to something else in the body, and your tight back muscles caused a chain-reaction to pull on your Achilles tendon which pulls on your Plantar tendon under your arch. Both of them yanking at the same time make that place in your heel so inflamed you can’t walk on it.” Instantly I accepted the reality of his diagnosis. Even though I’d been a dancer for years, I’d ignored the connections and stopped working on keeping them all stretched to relieve tension on each other. Another case of the shoemaker’s children going barefoot. The foolishness of it made me blush. Of all people…I should have known.