Living With Metatarsus Adductus: A Lifetime of Silent Strength

For most of my life, I assumed aching legs and sore feet were just part of being an active kid. I ran, jumped, swam, and kept up with everyone else, never realizing my feet were shaped differently. Decades later I learned the name—Metatarsus Adductus—and suddenly my childhood made sense. This is the long, winding account of how a body can hurt and still keep going, and how faith can turn pain into perspective.

👣 Barefoot Childhood, Quiet Pain

Shoes and I never got along. My feet were wide in an odd place, as if the middle toes were trying to change lanes. My mother did what mothers do—massaged my feet and calves after long days, rubbed my back when I couldn’t sleep, and hunted for shoes that didn’t pinch. Most days she gave up and let me go barefoot.

I thought everyone’s legs and feet hurt after playing outside. I never complained because I didn’t know there was anything to complain about. Pain felt ordinary, like the grass stains on my knees or the dust on my ankles. It belonged to the day and washed off by morning—until it didn’t.

🏊‍♀️ Gym Class and the Illusion of Normal

In junior high—Kennedy era, strict gym classes—we swam laps (my favorite), ran track, and practiced basic gymnastics. Stretching was a ritual. Touch your toes. Reach and hold. Breathe. Everyone reached. I didn’t. Standing or sitting, my fingers hovered in the air, stubbornly short of my toes.

Still, I was fast. Give me the 50, 75, or 100-yard dash and I’d fly. Ask me to run the mile and I’d smile politely and fade to the back. Long distance felt like running on splinters. I chalked it up to being a sprinter, nothing more. Looking back, I see the clues were everywhere, but they were written in a language I didn’t yet know how to read.

⚡ The Snap That Changed Everything at 50

At age fifty, my body finally spoke in a voice I couldn’t ignore. A tendon on the outside of my left ankle slipped, popped to the top of my foot, and snapped back into place so fast my mouth opened but no sound came out. It was pain, yes, but also shock—like tripping on a step you were sure was there.

I stood still. The room went small. When the world re-sized itself, I knew this wasn’t “just tired feet.” I scheduled an appointment with a foot and ankle specialist and carried my questions into the waiting room like a stack of heavy books.

🩻 Scans, Words, and a Name

X-rays. Scans. Careful hands tracing the outline of my bones. The specialist spoke in precise sentences, but kindness sat behind his eyes.

“You have the tightest Achilles’ tendons I’ve ever seen,” he said, and then he showed me why my shins and calves looked like they belonged to a sprinter. My muscles had grown large to compensate for the way my feet turned in. The three middle toes on each foot zig-zagged from the ankle down, widening my feet in an unusual place.

He mentioned osteoarthritis—both feet, fingers, spine. The picture widened. Years of compensation had left fingerprints everywhere. And then he gave it a name: Metatarsus Adductus, likely congenital. For the first time, my body’s handwriting was translated, and I finally understood the story it had been telling.

He brought in his techs, nurses, and P.A.s so they could study the films and examine my gait. Not to put me on display, but to teach and learn. Oddly, it made me feel seen. Not fragile—just unusual.

🛠️ Why Surgery Wasn’t the Answer

We talked through the “fix.” It wasn’t one surgery. It was many—possibly breaking bones (tibia, fibula), tightening lax ligaments, releasing tendons that were too tight, and then doing it all again after recovery to correct what the first round would reveal. And surgery wouldn’t erase my existing arthritis.

He looked at the whole of me: my age, the joints already complaining, the risks layered on top of the pain I lived with. Then he said something I didn’t expect from a surgeon: “I won’t recommend this. You walk. You function. To take a woman who’s managing—even in pain—and put her through all of this would feel like malpractice.”

I respected him immediately. Honesty is a kind of medicine. It doesn’t numb anything, but it gives you your choices back.

🧠 Adaptation: The Body’s Quiet Genius

Before I left, he said, almost to himself, “It’s amazing how the human body compensates for a congenital abnormality like this.” I asked if he’d call it a miracle. He smiled carefully—“Not my vernacular.” I smiled wider—“It’s mine.”

That exchange stayed with me. Because adaptation is ordinary and wondrous at the same time. My body found workarounds: big calves to steady me, stubborn arches to hold me up, habits that let me walk flat-footed and straight ahead. Not perfect. But forward.

🚶‍♀️ Living With Pain Without Letting It Have Me

I’m 66 now. Pain and I share a small house. The arches complain; the shins and calves sing their old song; my hands, elbows, and curved spine add their harmonies. Some days the chorus is loud. Other days it is background music and I go about my life. People who pass me on the sidewalk see a “normal” woman, a few inches shorter than I might have been. They don’t see the negotiation happening with every step. That’s fine. The deal is between me and my body.

What helps me (not medical advice, just my lived experience):

Shoes I can actually trust, even if they’re not pretty.
Stretching that respects limits: calf releases, gentle ankle circles, slow toe spreads.
Heat on stubborn mornings, ice on angry evenings.
Short, purposeful walks instead of heroic distances.
Rest without guilt. Permission to stop is a gift you give yourself.
A sense of humor. It lubricates the joints the way oil does a hinge.

Some days I overdo it. Some days I don’t do enough. Most days I thread the needle and call it grace.

🙏 Faith, Language, and the Shape of Gratitude

I keep thinking about language—his and mine. He has the language of training and scans and measurements. I have the language of prayer and gratitude. We both told the truth, just in different dialects.

When I say God is good, I don’t mean the pain vanished. I mean I’ve been given the strength to carry it. I mean my mother’s hands massaging my legs in a kitchen that smelled like soap. I mean a surgeon choosing restraint. I mean the ordinary miracle of standing upright and moving forward, again and again.

🌼 Final Reflections

Metatarsus Adductus didn’t ruin my life. It shaped it. It drew a border around what I can do comfortably and asked me to build something beautiful inside those lines. Would a stack of surgeries have redrawn the map? Maybe. But the life I’ve lived—swimming hard, sprinting fast, walking straight, laughing often—fits me like the one pair of shoes that finally does.

I still live with pain. I also live with resilience. Both are true. Both belong. And when I look at the long arc—from barefoot childhood to this morning’s careful first steps—I feel something deeper than explanation. Call it adaptation. Call it grace. I call it a miracle.