Coping With Brachymetatarsia

Hi all,

Wow I never really knew that there was a name for this! I had a physical one year and my doctor noted my toe and mentioned what it was but I didn’t think much of it. Today I had some free time and was just curious to see if I could find out what it was called and learn about it.

Anyway, my right foot has brachymetatarsia and I have always been shy with it. I am now fifteen and my parents think I had it all my life– but I have seen pictures of my baby feet, and unless it was incorrectly labeled, they were “normal”. Like most of you have said, I wear socks and special flip flops- hard to find indeed. One pair I got at as a party favor several years ago and frankly look ridiculous… they are bright yellow with a flower in the middle. Flats are easier to find, but as some of you mentioned- its no fun to squeeze your little toe to death! Haha.

I have always been so conscious of my feet and others noticing. I wonder if other people even pay attention to feet at all. For example, I recently joined the cross country/track team and we ran on the beach. The coach asked us to take our shoes off.. at first I was reluctant but I thought nobody was going to notice, they’re all going to pay attention to running. So I even took off my socks! We ran on the wet sand (no place to dig in my feet) and at first I was afraid people would notice my footprints. If anyone did.. well we were moving too fast to closely examine them or they didn’t say anything. So I was very proud.

The few that know about my toe -excluding my family- were told one on one and in a very secretive manner. It’s very hard to talk about!

And one last thing- my right foot (the one with brach.) is bigger than my left. From reading this article I think it could be because my big toe has to carry more weight on my right foot than on my left, so it spread out more. Funny huh!

Well thanks for reading, that’s my toe story. I’d like to hear what you all say!