Do you know about toes?

I posted this on Metafilter, but perhaps one of you five people is secretly a toe specialist?

So I´m doing one of those “backpack-for-awhile” trips, and while in Barcelona I ran out of socks. “Easy enough, ” I thought, “I´ll just walk around in my flip-flops and do laundry tonight.” So I walk all day (Thursday)–with a bit of mild hiking up to the big park there–and my toes really started to hurt. I took it easy that night and pretty much stayed in, walked in shoes the next day and the same thing happened. I guess, technically, the pain never went away.

It hurts most when I try to rub my big toe on top of the toe next to it. I´m not sure if that´s a common thing to do, so I understand I could be freakish for that, but the same movement/bendability is also needed for walking. So basically it hurts to walk. This morning when I tried to flex my big toes it really felt like my tendons running up the to of my feet were dry rubberbands. It was painful (and mildly nauseating).

My questions are:
A) What did I do?
B) If I spend a couple of days off my feet will it go away?
C) Can I rub out the pain/put leeches on my feet/etc. to get out the pain while I´m travelling?
D) If I can’t do anything to solve it, will I do any pemanent damage by continuing to walk without treatment?

I ‘m travelling until May 2nd, so this will be quite the bummer, potentially.

I also realize someone might have asked a similar question a few months ago, but perhaps are problems are different/maybe there’s some new toe-pain specialist to the scene.

Kids: never walk all day in flip-flops,
Mike

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Published:
3.18.07 / 4am
Category:
Travel