Morton's Neuroma agony

I have the dreaded nerve inflamation on my right foot. 

Had the same on left foot years ago and after years of limping around finally solved the issue with surgery. 

I'm hoping for some input about how I can manage this without surgery.  

Specifically:

• Insoles (don't get me started...)
• Toe spreaders (like Correct Toes)
• Zero drop wide toe box shoes (like Altra)
• Cortisone injections to reduce nerve inflamation
• Alcohol injections to kill nerve
• Cryotherapy (the new standard or snake oil?)
• Foot/toe exercises?
• Other ideas?

Bruno Schullwrote:

I have the dreaded nerve inflamation on my right foot. 

Had the same on left foot years ago and after years of limping around finally solved the issue with surgery. 

I'm hoping for some input about how I can manage this without surgery.  

Specifically:

• Insoles (don't get me started...)
• Toe spreaders (like Correct Toes)
• Zero drop wide toe box shoes (like Altra)
• Cortisone injections to reduce nerve inflamation
• Alcohol injections to kill nerve
• Cryotherapy (the new standard or snake oil?)
• Foot/toe exercises?
• Other ideas?

TL;DR - I tried a lot of these, but it only got fixed with surgery :-(

• Insoles (don't get me started...)
  • I did the tear drop shaped gel pad under the ball of my foot, definitely helped with symptoms but didn't solve the problem
• Toe spreaders (like Correct Toes)
  • Never tried these
• Zero drop wide toe box shoes (like Altra)
  • I actually think the lack of support in my Altras is what caused the problem for me in the first place
• Cortisone injections to reduce nerve inflamation
  • Tried, did nothing, even on the day of the injection
• Alcohol injections to kill nerve
  • Never did try this, but it was also never recommended by my orthopedist or podiatrists
• Cryotherapy (the new standard or snake oil?)
• Foot/toe exercises?
  • Did lots of these and went to PT, didn't seem to help
• Other ideas?
  • PT did ultrasound, also didn't help

Firstly, I am sorry you are dealing with pain, and really hope there's a path out of it for you!  What pain does to us and our nerves at regular intervals is no good, and if there's any chance that what worked for me might work for you, I feel good about pausing on my tasks at hand, and filling out this response to your post.

I have a reconstructed right foot after a 40' deck that led to my right foot becoming The Artist Formerly Known As "Crush Foot", due to it being somewhat crushed and requiring titanium parts to deal with the 4mm of displacement for my Jone's Fracture of my 5th metatarsal as well as a lot of bone putty for the extensive comminution in my ankle joint. In that same fall, I broke my left tibia, permanently dented my right buttcheek, dealt with a massive right femur socket hematoma, had a 23% compression fracture on my L1 verterbrae, bruised my internal organs, and shifted my IUD off to the side of my reproductive system. The helmet I wore has deep gouges in it, and I kept it (even though it is obviously retired), because it fills me with a sense of awe that I did not die in the fall that changed the structure of the helmet so drastically.

The most helpful thing for my issues with my nerve inflammation in my reconstructed foot has hands down been MELT therapy, proper footwear... and climbing! I live in my La Sportiva approach shoes due to the hard sole and ability to lace them tight from toe to the opening, and climb in TC Pros for the same reason. My podiatrist/surgeon told me he thought my TC Pros kept my fracture from becoming a compound fracture, which would have made rapping down from the third pitch and hiking out much more challenging than they were! I am glad to have fallen in love with crack climbing when I fell in love with climbing, since the cracks at Index are why I wear those shoes, and those shoes kept my bones inside of my skin!

I did PT and it did not do much, even after visiting a second practitioner and spending a ton of money. Toe spreaders did not bring much relief but were a little helpful, and too wide of a toe box negatively affects my comfort and stability. I stayed away from cortisone, not wanting to dabble in a tolerance and then ineffectiveness game.

I swear by the MELT method: it's a quick process with balls under your feet, and you create connective tissue hydration that brings an insane amount of relief to those screaming nerves in your feet! I learned about it after visiting a naturopath a half year after my injury, frustrated by my numbness, pain, and lack of balance, and what kind of felt like a constant disconnect between my various orthopedic team members.

Me: "How do I heal my spine?"
Spinal Orthopedist: "By walking."
Me: "My left leg is broken and my right foot was reconstructed, I cannot walk on either for 8 weeks..." (I am in his office in a wheelchair with both legs in casts)
Spinal Orthopedist: "Oh..."

Podiatrist: "You can still exercise, you can do your floor and abdomen work you love!"
Me: "My spinal orthopedist told me that I need to stay completely still, because if I end up with two more degrees of compression in my compression fracture of L1 they have to put a balloon between my vertebrae in surgery and add liquid cement to my spinal column."
Podiatrist: "Oh...." (can tab over from my foot X-ray to the X-ray of my broken spine by hitting the right arrow on the screen we are viewing together)

Also, eating 30x Arnica Montana tablets like candy, a steady stream of CBD and CBG, Voltaren gel, and all of the anti-inflammation things you can handle ingesting. I drink a cinnamon, turmeric, ginger and black pepper latte from my nespresso set up each morning, and it's more like a sludge of spices with a little espresso and almond milk than a latte, but I feel less inflammation when regularly ingesting it.

Here are links to the things I have mentioned:

A video for the MELT technique for connective tissue hydration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEpuhs9Pru8

A link for the balls: https://www.amazon.com/MELT-Method-Kit-Bundle/dp/B0721KW8W4/ref=sr_1_23?crid=S7GNBV42585Z&&keywords=Melt+balls+for+feet&&qid=1663028812&&sprefix=melt+balls+for+feet%2Caps%2C149&&sr=8-23

A link for the Arnica Montana tablets: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M7596BZ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

A link for Voltaren gel, which works better for me than ingesting Naproxen sodium, and also means no anti-inflammation medication related stomach or kidney damage: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08H4M2SD6/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Also, do you think your doctor or PT person isn't paying attention? Is not as obsessed with your health as you are? I know it is not cheap to do so, but fire them! Get someone that is paying attention and looking out for you! I fired a doctor that had an assistant from her office call me, laughing, because while working on ordering MRIs for my shoulder since it also was injured, the doctor had realized that she had "...[completely spaced that my spine was broken!]".

What? You no longer get to have anything to do with my wellbeing, knowing that you missed that my spine is broken on the report that lists my spine being broken in the list of injuries. I fired the two ineffective PT people I saw and hunted down PT that really worked for me via medical journals I found via Google searches.

Good luck, I hope you find a way out of the pain, ASAP!

My foot before and after: 

Sarah Getterwrote:

Also, do you think your doctor or PT person isn't paying attention? Is not as obsessed with your health as you are? I know it is not cheap to do so, but fire them! Get someone that is paying attention and looking out for you!

My son, who is a young doctor, shared his observation that majority of doctors do not really care about patients and put only minimal efforts into figuring out proper diagnosis and better approach to treatment. :(
So shopping for a better doctor is really important.

Yurywrote:

My son, who is a young doctor, shared his observation that majority of doctors do not really care about patients and put only minimal efforts into figuring out proper diagnosis and better approach to treatment. :(
So shopping for a better doctor is really important.

Maybe that apathy is shaped by the fact that our profit based healthcare presents a serious moral dilemma?

I dropped out of my pre-med track my freshman year of college, after joining AMSA (American Medical Students Association), and learning during a shadow that before I could treat someone outside of an ER situation (and sometimes there, too), I would be required to have authorization from insurance providers, or proof of payment to provide treatment, even in instances where the treatment was the deciding factor in whether or not someone lived or died.

I was horrified, and immediately knew I'd never be able to deny treatment to a person due to their inability to pay. Money is not even real, it's a construct we all agree upon, and while yes, capitalism is a force that influences my own life in a very real way, the idea that people die because of a lack of money or insurance, all of the time, makes no sense to me.

I cannot imagine what kind of cognitive processes must be involved in order to be a successful doctor here in the United States. Navigating that landscape is something my emotional self is just not cut out for, at all, and maybe is why we see practitioners that seem to not care... maybe concern and investment, coexisting with pointless death, cause a human to be filled with cortisol due to the diurnal nature of the two realities involved.

I am aware that I have the privilege of being able to replace subpar practitioners with ones I feel better about taking care of me. I do pay Premera $657 a month for that privilege, but have the privilege of being able to pay that... or maybe I have the privilege of being able to ignore how wildly out of my budget my health insurance really is for me?  

Please thank your son for me for fighting the good fight! Empathetic medical practitioners are a huge part of my success story!

I am lucky and have a team I heartily endorse. I had instances of being in contact with them after hours, I was helped out with my Paid Family Medical Leave paperwork, which helped me not completely empty my retirement account when I fell and lost my job, and to have humans that seemed to really care, including their assistants and front desk teams, who all made me feel that same attention and concern!

My care team were all via Polyclinic in Seattle, if anyone wants my endorsements:

Primary Care Physician: Dr. Ruby Farooqui

Podiatrist/Surgeon (I am still blown away by his work; the way my foot healed with the hardware after one surgery is pretty much an outlier for how the procedure normally goes... multiple surgeries as well as amputation were potentials for me at certain points in my recovery): Dr Edward Chesnustis III

Hip/Spine Orthopedist: Duong (Young) Tran, PA-C

Knee/Shoulder Orthopedist: Dr. Jim Hsu

Sarah Getterwrote:

Maybe that apathy is shaped by the fact that our profit based healthcare presents a serious moral dilemma?

He lives in Canada.
One of the reasons he was strongly against moving to the US is overprescription of unneeded tests and unneeded treatments due to fear of litigation.
He believes that such overprescription may lead to worse outcome.

On the other hand you still have much better health care system down there.
In Canada after many years of government propaganda, both federal and provincial governments finally acknowledged last year that Canadian health care system is in crisis.  

I had fairly severe Morton's in my left foot for several years.  Tried prescription and over-the-counter orthotics to no avail.  When I started to get symptoms in my right foot as well, I moved to wide toe box shoes for everything (home, running, biking, and climbing). For my work shoes I just pulled out the insert to create more room for my feet.  Within a month the pain was vastly reduced, and at this point (years later) it is a complete non-issue unless I happen to step barefoot on something that presses on the nerve.

By the way, at the time I was also suffering from Haglund's deformity (heel spurs) that had been growing for years and were getting enormous!  I cut big holes in the back of my running & biking shoes to match the spurs, and shaved down the rubber on my climbing shoes based on a suggestion from someone on MP (sorry forget who!), and within 6 months the spurs were almost completely gone.  The points is, I am now convinced that this sort of conservative treatment (based on a basic understanding of the biomechanics involved) can allow your body to fix just about anything.

p.s. I tried wide-toe zero-drop running shoes as well, and found them helpful (and a lot of fun to run in) but after a year I realized they were doing more harm than good as a daily runner.  Mabe a technique issue, ymmv.  Now I save them for running when on travel only (since they pack down to almost nothing).

This reply is for Sarah Getter,

I am thrilled that the MELT Method worked for you. As a certified MELT instructor I agree, the power in that simple Large Soft Ball is amazing, and definitely healing, as our fascia is global and the MELT Method is all about hydrating the fascial system. 

Wider shoes and boots helped me, but when it got really bad I had cortisone injections. Those knocked the pain down to very manageable levels. The key I think was going to the right podiatrist, mine sees a large number of professional athletes.

Wendy Loew-Mariwrote:

This reply is for Sarah Getter,

I am thrilled that the MELT Method worked for you. As a certified MELT instructor I agree, the power in that simple Large Soft Ball is amazing, and definitely healing, as our fascia is global and the MELT Method is all about hydrating the fascial system. 

I am glad you are someone spreading the power of the MELT method.

Before being turned onto MELT, connective tissue hydration was not on my radar, and now I know I can improve my mobility and flexibility drastically with the technique, which in turn reduces my pain, significantly!

Getting my brain to actively engage, and be in touch with all of the different parts of my foot has helped me a lot.  Sensing the stage of any movement that causes me pain, and being able to stop right there in the exact spot that is creating the pain signal, as opposed to completing the movement, has changed how I interact with the physical world in a such a beneficial way!

Stein Mauswrote:

Wider shoes and boots helped me, but when it got really bad I had cortisone injections. Those knocked the pain down to very manageable levels. The key I think was going to the right podiatrist, mine sees a large number of professional athletes.

Stein Maus, I really appreciate your point about seeing the right podiatrist!  Getting treated by someone that understands what it is to be athletic is crucial!

Toe spreaders, wider shoes. at least twice a day use a 3" ish firm ball to stretch your feet, rolling it from top to bottom till you've done the entire foot and repeat side to side. Stretch your feet, especially sitting back on your heels with toes first curled under and then curled the opposite way, holding for 30 seconds each.  During the day, Tape your forefoot  not too firmly, for a few weeks till the pain subsides and then gradually wear the tape for fewer hours each day. Good luck. 

I got injections with denatured alcohol in both feet for Morton’s Neuroma years ago. It worked well. My right foot still hurts a little especially at night. Also all of my footwear now is a little big and wide in the toe box which helps a lot. I definitely developed it from wearing climbing shoes two sizes too small like everyone did 20+ years ago. I still climb a lot but now wear shoes my actual size. 

I have Morton's neuroma in my right foot and want to recommend some climbing shoes for fellow sufferers:

Butora Gomi wide fit. Go a half size up from your shoe size, they'll still be plenty tight trust me.