About four years ago I started feeling tingling then sharp pains from the bottoms of my feet. It became pretty constant but was worse at night (starting mid-afternoon) At the time one foot was worse than the other. I went to a foot doctor and it took him three visits (and bills) to diagnose it as a minor ankle sprain and he put me in a boot for a couple months. Not too happy when, after paying a few hundred for the boot, it made absolutely no difference. In fact, the foot pain got worse. I didn't want to keep shelling out money for doctor visits, so I just dealt with the pain for a while. I wondered if part of it had to do with my weight and with my wife's support and a lot of work I lost 100 pounds in a year (from 300 to 200 lbs). While I lost weight the pain subsided for a while but came back after a few weeks. I started running more and found that I didn't have much foot pain for the first hour or so of running but then it escalated from there and became pretty intense on my long runs (I got back into marathoning). Seeing that weight wasn't the problem I decided to max out my HSA and get to the bottom of things (nice foot pain pun there).

Instead of going back to the ineffective foot doctor in my town, I decided to see a different foot doctor in another city (I checked references this time). He speculated it could be a pinched nerve and sent me to a neurologist. I did a shock test thing that came back negative. So went back to the second foot doctor and he said he thought it could be compartment syndrome (I have really big calves... genetics and running). I also am a toe walker so he recommended I see a physical therapist and chiropractor. I went to both and did physical therapy for several months. My physical therapist also suspected it was either compartment syndrome or something to do with my toe walking so he recommended I get some zero drop shoes and I got a couple of pairs of hakas and a pair of altras. I used them for several months but didn't see a difference. I requested a cortisone shot before my first big ultra (a 52.4 mile double marathon) but the foot doctor wouldn't do it saying it would make no difference. I also saw my family doctor and he had no clue what was up. In 2019 I paid more than $10k in medical bills and footwear but it made no difference. I'm an elementary school teacher and don't have that kind of cash or medical benefits, so I gave up the quest to live in less pain.

In the two years since then I haven't gone back to any foot doctors. I've learned to live with nearly constant tingling in my feet that gets slightly worse at night. It's not unbearable now like it was four years ago (so I wonder if losing the weight really did help... maybe my calves are slightly smaller). I don't run 1 hour + as frequently anymore (just on Saturdays, and those are usually just 7-13 miles) so that might be helping as well. I've kind of resigned myself to the idea that I'll deal with this the rest of my life. But I'm in my early 40s and if I can fix it I'd love to be pain free. Any thoughts or ideas that I've missed?