Foot neuroma, anybody?

It feels as if someone has implanted a small water balloon on the bottom of my foot, right at the base of the 2nd & middle toes. The balloon never completely empties so it's pushing the 2nd toe toward the big toe. If I stand or walk, it''s as if someone pumps in 1/4 cup of water into that tiny space. Burning and very painful, extremely difficult to stand or walk once it starts. Also unpredictable.

I doubt there's an SS connection, but who else would I ask 😀

Yes, they cut between the toes, and took the neuroma out and stiched it up.  Left it feeling numb all these years to this day.  It's been over 25 years.  I don't believe it had anything to do with my SS, it had to do with wearing high heels all those years!  What we suffered for our beautiful shoes!  But, sometimes it just happens even if you wear good comfortable shoes.  Now I have such problems with my feet due to the neuropathy, due to my SS, I mostly wear my 20year old Birkenstocks, as they are the most comfortable, and in winter I wear my Uggs.  I only wear my "pretty" shoes if we go out to dinner, so out the door, sit, and home!!  LOL  Find a good foot surgeon, and have them give you an opinion, and if they take it out, do what they say!!!  I did too much walking, and had a lot of swelling and pain, but I also had my bunion taken care of at the same time.  I don't suggest having both done at the same time unless you have time to stay off of the foot!!!  I wish you luck!!  Just be a good patient and do what they tell you! 

A couple of years ago I had the same thing, but it turned out just to be a massive corn in my case, due to wearing a pair of shoes that were too loose and rubbed the ball of my foot. It went away spontaneously after I stopped wearing the shoes.

However, it didn't separate my toes, as aitarg is describing, and I don't think a plantar wart would do that either.

I am so often wrong, Amkoffee, anything's possible. But I had a plantar's wart as a child on the other foot. The neurons suggestion came from the ER doc when I went in with a pinched nerve last week. My own doc in April thought maybe it was a stress fracture so I asked The Most Handsome Man I Have Ever Seen Outside Hollywood if he'd have them xray that foot while scanning my hip and other leg. Neuroma was his pre- & post-xray diagnosis. "Sooner or later you'll have to get it taken care of by a podiatrist," were his parting words. It's the surgical possibility that has me concerned, don't think they can give me steroid injection (s).

Hi aitarg, I wasn't suggesting changing shoes would help you, just remarking that it worked for a plantar corn. It does sound like yours might be a neuroma.

I loved your description of your doc as TMHMIHESOH! Wish I had one like that. My GP looks like a tubby little teddy bear. That being said, he's absolutely adorable. I always feel I want to take him home with me at the end of a consultation! He's also a fantastic doctor who gives me up to 40 mins per consultation - much of which he spends chatting about UK television and movies - and really listens. He's a real little gem even if he isn't handsome.

I do hope you can find a solution for your foot problem. Maybe start with a podiatrist, in the hope that it might be something simpler than a neuroma? Seems to me you have enough health problems without having to cope with that one too.

Talking of having enough health problems already - four days ago while working at my computer I suddenly developed a central scotoma (blind spot) in both eyes. It was an opaque grey circle - and it was getting rapidly bigger. Was I in a panic! Convinced it was a TIA (at least) I immediately packed a bag in case I had to go to the hospital. Kept grinning at myself in the mirror to make sure I didn't have a facial weakness (I didn't) but was scared I was going to lose my sight altogether as more and more of the centre disappeared.

As there was no one to drive me, I sat down at the phone to call an ambulance - at which point the thing suddenly turned into the revolving spokes of a wheel. I held off calling, to see what would happen, and sure enough it started moving off slowly towards the right, then turned into a crescent shape with zig-zags and flashing lights in it. At this point I recognised it as a migraine aura - in spite of the fact I've never had one before in my life. It broadened out to what looked like an expanse of rippling water with the sun on it, filling the right side of my visual field, then gradually withdrawing off the edge. The whole episode lasted 25-30 mins, not followed by headache or nausea. No recurrence.

Still concerned, as I didn't think migraines could start in your 70s, I googled it - only to find this isn't all that rare, and it's common for late-onset migraine not to be accompanied by headache. Most experts think there's no cardiovascular link, but a small number make a link with increased risk of TIA. The teddy-bear is on holiday till the end of this month, but I think I might touch base with him when he gets back anyway.

Yikes on the migraine aura, Lily. I wouldn't have had a clue.

TMHMIESOH is an ER doc, so I may never see him again. Made sure I enjoyed him while I was there😎

Some of the sites I've browsed suggest that changing shoes might help, that 's why I said that. I quit going barefoot in the house -- a lifelong love of mine -- and now wear my supportive sandals even indoors as the arch support helps a lot.

I agree: Moratorium NOW for all is us on new/worsening health issues! Listen up, universe, we're not kidding here!

Aitarg

Sounds like the vestibular physiotherapist I saw when I had the attack of BPPV (positional vertigo) earlier this year. That got pretty physical too - they throw you about a bit when performing the Epley manoeuvre to provoke nystagmus so they can check whether they're getting your errant inner ear crystals back in the right place.

He was lovely too. I was quite nervous, having had positional vertigo 25 years earlier but in the other ear. That time I saw a hopeless ENT doctor who botched the manoeuvre, causing so much nausea I threw up on his consulting room floor. How's that for poetic justice?

Seeing how jittery I was, the physio kept giving me hugs throughout the procedure, calling me "good girl" and "darling". Really set my poor heart aflutter! I was slightly tempted to bang my head against a wall after that, so I'd dislodge the crystals again and have to go back to him. But only very slightly tempted... anyone who's had BPPV will know what a relief it is to get shot of it!

So sorry to hear about not being able to go barefoot around the house, particularly in summer. Poor you! I'm in a 7th-floor apartment, directly under a flat roof, with east-west aspects so I get the sun all day. Our homes never have aircon, so when we get a spell of warm weather (up to 95°F in the shade in recent weeks) my place heats up like an oven and stays that way. I always have hot feet at the best of times, so my only relief is walking barefoot on the cool ceramic tiles that cover most of my floors. I really hope you can get some relief.

Hello Lily. I read your posts so often I feel like you are a personal friend!  About the migraine auras:  I am now 72 and have been getting them, exactly as you describe, since 1989, sometimes moving off to the right and sometimes moving off to the left, always visible in both eyes with a 'space' that I have presumed is the optic nerve entry.  I was teaching at the time of the first one and it was lunchtime and I asked an ex-nurse biology teacher (like me) on staff about it and she made the TIA suggestion and possibity of a stroke and left me to go off to teach my next class!  I was totally stressed at the time and that didn't help!  At first I thought they were hormonal then menopause came and went and they didn't go with it and I decided they were from stress.  I still get them but have had periods where they haven't occurred for years then back they will come every month maybe.  This year, despite having a devil of a year so far, I have had none of these auras.  So, they remain a mystery and I hate biological mysteries but they are a mere brief inconvenience.  I wish they were my only problem!  I do hope you are wrong about the stroke link.  Cheers from wintry Australia.

Hello Aitarg.  I do enjoy your posts; they make me smile, not so easy these days.  I do not have your foot problem but have pronating feet and got debilitating ankle pain earlier this year because of tendons rubbing on the side under the ankle bone.  I had not been wearing my orthotics indoors or out in the garden - like you, loved just socks or bare feet in the house and the little canvas shoes were so easy to slip on when going outside.  Alas, alack, now I must wear the orthotics and heavy shoes inside.  If it isn't one thing, it's another!  Cheers to you also, from chilly Australia.

Hi Maureen

Tendons rubbing inside the ankle sounds excruciating! I am glad that there is some way to ease that a bit. Total drag, yes, about orthotics & heavy shoes indoors.

I mat have brought this neuroma upon myself: I bought some very cute, lime green and black flip flops made of a squashy, waffle-weave substance. One day I wore them while running errands which included shopping in 2 stores. Before I got home ,,, well, i doubt that this could've caused a bundle of nerves to suddenly go nuts, but can't help thinking that the problem might've waited longer to show up had i not been such an old fool. Will ask the foot doctor.

Chilly Australia? My ignorance is showing because I never know how cold it gets there, just that for whatever reason the Southern Hemisphere doesn't tend to get as cold as matching Northern Hemisphere latitudes. We've had so little really cold weather in our last 10-12 winters that it's getting harder to call them that. I 'm in Austin Texas and yesterday we hit 107°F, 41.666°C. How chilly is it where you are?

[I babble along about the weather because I got up to a heat-shifted house this morning: bolt on door from house to attached garage eon't slide home and garden gate latch on same side of house won't fit into the catch mechanism due to gate /fence further separation away from house. Am in shock! On the other hand, I have a home with working AC, so I'll get over this, lol]

Hi Maureen,

Greetings from (fairly) sunny Belgium.

I suppose if you've been getting these migraine auras since 1989 and you're still hale and hearty now, you don't have too much to worry about! I have to say the the majority of medical sites I've looked at since this happened have said there's very little evidence to link late-onset aura with stroke, and not much to link it with TIA either. Late onset aura is defined as starting above the age of 60, so there's already a statistically increased risk of TIA in this age group, which muddies the waters.

In any case I'm not going to worry about it. Though I'm by no means ready to shuffle off this mortal coil, I've exceeded my biblical three-score-years-and-ten, and I reckon we all gotta die of something!

What freaked me out most during my attack was that I initially had the opposite problem to yours. Far from having a central "space", my scotoma started out centrally - a static, solid grey blob that blacked everything out, and then started growing rapidly. It wasn't till it started flashing and revolving, which must have been 5-10 mins after the onset, that it dawned on me it might be a migraine aura. I was shaking like a leaf by that time! When it started moving slowly off to the right, and especially when the zigzags appeared, I felt a huge surge of relief. I was still a bit worried at first, as I'd never heard of this kind of thing starting in the 70s, but most of the research I've done so far has reassured me. It's been 12 days now and I haven't had another one. Incidentally, a poster I met over on the migraine board, who also had a late onset, said her neurologist told her the latest onset he'd come across was in a woman of 90.

Sorry to hear about the foot problems you describe in your post to aitarg. I certainly know all about tendon pain, and can heartily sympathise!

Hijacking this one, aitarg. (On the assumption I can actually get a post through - dunno what's going on lately! I'll take a copy anyway.)

That may not be a neuroma after all, or even if it is it might clear up spontaneously. As mentioned in an earlier post, I once had something similar. A few years back I bought a very comfortable pair of shoes in the sales - the expensive Ecco brand, highly reputed on this side of the Atlantic. They were a bit too wide for my rather narrow feet, but had criss-cross straps that held them firmly in place. They didn't look very elegant but they were wonderfully comfortable, which is what I go for these days. I was, however, aware that my feet moved around inside them a lot.

After quite a short time of wearing them, I too noticed a pain in the ball of my foot, but not as close to my toes as what you describe. It went away that summer, when I wore lighter shoes, but returned the following winter, when I started wearing the criss-cross shoes again. I'm a bit slow on the uptake, so it took me a couple of years to figure out it was the shoes that were causing the problem. I developed a big, painful lump on the ball of my foot, but about an inch-and-a-half back from the root of my toes, and lined up between my second and third toes. In the end it hurt whichever shoes I wore. I interpreted it as a corn, albeit a very big one, but maybe it wasn't. I never saw anyone about it.

I eventually donated the offending shoes to a charity store. It took another couple of years for the whatever-it-was to disappear completely, but it cleared up without treatment. If I press hard over where it used to be, I can just about feel something like the hard centre of a very small corn, but it never bothers me these days.

My toes weren't forced apart by it, but I suspect that's because the rubbing happened in a different place on my foot. It may have been the base of the thong between your toes that did the damage in your case. I'd advise patience, as well as identifying and avoiding any footwear or behaviour that makes the pain worse in the meantime. I also think the podiatrist may be able to help. I'd advise waiting a bit longer before going in for surgery or steroid injections.

Thanks, Lily. I seriously regret that pair of flip flops!

Whatevet it is, it seems to be progressing. Raising those toes yesterday provided a new set of pains in the toes and on the too side of that foot, again at the "join" of toes-foot. A lot of the pain is similar to the small nerve peripheral neuropathy, yet different enough to be noticeable.

I am terrified of a bad surgical result. That foot & leg are what have kept me out of a wheelchair for most of 27 years. If I couldn't support most of my weight there, I'd be scr&w#d.

It may not be the same thing, but mine continued to get worse after I stopped wearing the shoes too. Sometimes it would even hurt when I wasn't even standing on the foot. In my case there was no resemblance to my peripheral neuropathy, as that doesn't cause actual pain, just unpleasant electrical sensations.

How long has it been now?

It's been about 5 months I think, maybe 6.

That's interesting what you said about the neuropathy because I get a whole range of sensations which we categorize as the SNPN. It started 20 years ago with these occasional excruciating but brief pains in toes. Sometimes I'd go 6 months to a year without it happening, but over the years the pains have moved into my feet, fingers & hands, they are intense enough to make me cry out, and they now sometimes last 30 seconds whereas they lasted only 1 or 2 seconds to start.

Then there are the burning sensations on my feet along with some pins & needles, and the occasional sensation I call "nerve tickle" because it is similar to what happens when an acupuncture needle touches a nerve. Also similar to nerve conduction & EMG sensations. An now getting these into the entire length if all 3 middle toes on this foot, and that's not how the SNPN hapoens.

If those things aren't SNPN, what are they?

Hi aitarg,

I don't really know a lot about peripheral neuropathy. I never got it officially diagnosed so wasn't tested for whether it was the small nerve type or not (though I'm guessing it is). It was my second SS symptom, appearing first in one big toe around the time the dry mouth started clearing up, more than 20 years ago. My then GP (yes, that one!) said PN and that it was due to old age. (What else...?)

I don't have the excruciating pains you describe, just intermittent attacks of generalised tingling and feelings of electric shock, and mainly in the fingers of my left hand these days, though I have had problems in my toes in the past. My left hand also has a tendency to go completely numb (though not paralysed) if I don't move it for half-an-hour or so - e.g. when watching TV in the evening. For about the last year I've noticed a constant faint tingling sensation in the fingertips of that hand. This goes on all the time, independently of the sudden attacks of sharp tingling. Feels a bit like when you'd been playing in the snow without gloves when you were a kid, then the sensation started coming back - but not as painful as that, fortunately.

I'm interested to hear about that sharp pain you describe. About 10 years ago I started getting something similar on the outside of my left heel, right down near the sole of my foot, and always in the same spot. It only ever lasted a second or two, but when it happened it used to make me yelp with pain, just like you. The first few times it happened I thought there was something in my shoe sticking in me, or even that an insect had bitten me. I never saw my doctor about it, as nothing was visible and I couldn't produce the pain to order, so knew I'd just get the "old age" diagnosis again. At its peak, it happened a couple of times a day, but faded after a period of a couple of years. I only rarely get it these days, but still in exactly the same spot when I do. Until I read your post, I never associated it with peripheral neuropathy, but maybe that's what it was.

I hope your toe problem eventually clears up spontaneously. I find a lot of things do.

Hello aitarg

I live in Melbourne on the south-eastern lower edge of Australia.  Tasmania below is colder, as are the interior parts of this state, Victoria.  It's not so bad here.  Our top yesterday was 15°C though we can have a high of 10°C; the mornings have been cold, overnight yesterday 1.8°C and today 1.0°C.  I do not envy your 41.666°C.  We usually get only a day or two above 40°C in summer although we reached 46°C on 'Black Saturday', accompanied by bush fires and deaths, a few years back.

The foot tendons rubbing were not so bad.  I have, in addition to the Sjogren's and a few other things, rather debilitating scoliosis with a curved and twisted spine, so a bit of ankle pain seems insignificant.  My rheumatologist, to his credit, diagnosed the ankle problem in about 10 seconds and it is of some interest because the two tendons run along the outer length of the foot and under the base of the 4th and 5th toes.  Easily misdiagnosed one would think.  I do get sore soles of the feet also from time to time, usually waking up with them.  Around 2002/3 I got really stressed about these, had this and that test, one with positively archaic equipment, and no diagnosis was made.  I suppose it is some sort of neuropathy but it didn't progress to anything worse and once I stopped stressing over it, it moved to the 'now and then' category and I largely ignore it.

I do hope you sort out your foot problem as quickly and as painlessly as possible.  I look forward to reading your next post.  With best wishes. 

Your climate sounds perfect, Maureen. Ours was not this hot and not for so many days per summer until in the last 9 years. As the weatherman said in '11 & '12, in all previously recorded years when a summer was considered very hot, that meant that we had some days where we hit 100-101F, 38C. Now when we say it's a hot summer we mean that we had many days of 40-44.5C.

None of which improves anyone's pain profiles and tempers!

I'm going to have to see my gp I guess about the neuroma. I don't want foot surgery with an unknown podiatrist, tho I know 2 to be avoided. Guess I'll call tomorrow.

More later as I find anything out.

Hello Aitarg - I don't know if or when you will be able to get this but I just wanted to say that, unfortunately, I know a lot more about Texas now than I did before.  My thoughts and prayers are with you in Austin and with all the people in Houston and the other cities and areas affected by the storms and floods of Hurricane Harvey as they devastate your state..  I often think of how dreadful it must be for people who are ill to start with in situations like this.  I do hope you are OK.  xx

Thank you Maureen.  Every single Texan appreciates all the thoughts and prayers.  Me, I'm extraordinarily furious about the nursing home residents who didn't get moved out til the water was 3'deep -- and extraordinarily thankful not to be one of them!  Thank you, again.