Plantar fasciitis confirmed

After a ridiculous 5 months of denial and fruitless hope, today I saw a sports podiatrist about my suspected plantar fasciitis situation. My hope was to get confirmation that I am in fact dealing with said situation, as well as a bossy treatment plan for how to go at it -- since, while my internet searches have yielded a bounty of suggested therapies, I haven't committed to any of them on a regular basis.

So yes, he thinks I have a "classic" case of plantar fasciitis. Before you go thinking I just wasted a barrel of money to confirm the obvious, he had a novel idea about why it might be happening. I'd been assuming that I just trained too hard last spring, when SuperAthlete J and I were working so diligently on our pace. All those intervals and tempo runs (and the heavy pounding that came along with them) must have done me in, right?

Well, maybe not. Smart Dr. Blahouse (who was a charmer in every way, I must say, and I really recommend him if you've ever got something going on with your sporty foot) took one look at me and said he suspected that one of my legs is longer than the other. The right leg, in fact, which is the one with the troublesome foot and, come to think of it, is also the side on which I've been having low back pain for about the past four years.

WTF, one leg longer than the other? How interesting. And Dr. Blahouse didn't soft-pedal his thinking one bit. He told me it was "very pronounced" and he could see that I was "clearly listing to the left." He basically made me feel like Quasimodo, lurching around his office.

That's OK by me, if it means a more obvious fix to my problem. To confirm his suspicion, Dr. B is sending me for a "limb length study" which is a fancy term for "an X-ray that will look at the bones in my legs and my hips." Assuming the suspicion bears out, next I'll get custom orthotics that will give me a bit of a lift on the left side -- and stop making my right side take the brunt of my high-impact activities (which, to explain the obvious, would be the probable cause of the plantar fasciitis and hip pain). He also suggested twice-weekly physical therapy sessions for 10 weeks, and one week of intense ibuprofen dosage to reduce the inflammation. Oh, and he also said I should continue using my Strassburg sock which, it must be confessed, most often remains undisturbed on my bedside table instead of encasing my leg with its healing magic.

So, there you have it. A bit of a bossy treatment plan and a potential reason for my foot troubles ... all in all, a successful visit to the sports podiatrist. More soon on whether Dr. B was correct. If not, I may want to take back all the nice things I said about him.