Maintenance is where Second Shift Dad covers the body the way we cover the truck: what breaks, what we try, and what actually works, from a dad who is living with it, not a doctor. This is general information and my own experience only, not medical advice. If you are in pain, or if a red flag below sounds like you, get it looked at by a professional. That is the rule for this whole series.
Two months ago my heel started hurting. Not during anything. After.
That is the part nobody warned me about. My foot feels fine while I am moving. It can feel completely normal once I am warmed up and walking. The pain waits until I sit down for a while, or lay down, and then it collects its money on the first steps when I get back up. Sit through a meal, get up: hobble. Lay down for a rest, get up: hobble. Then it loosens, and I am fine again, like nothing is wrong.
For two months, that has been the deal, every day, and it is not getting better.
What I have done about it so far: almost nothing
Here is the honest section, because this series does not run without it. My entire treatment plan for two months has been: try to suck up the pain.
No stretches. No icing. No plan. I wear good boots: Ariat pull-ons with an insole for work around home and on weekends, and at work I wear Merrell black side-zip boots. I keep the Foot Relief Insoles (the $69.95 Extreme Sports tier) in them, because my friend is a dealer and I am a member, but I am not claiming that those insoles have fixed anything. They are comfortable. Comfortable is not treatment.
Meanwhile the pattern has taught me one thing the hard way: rest is not the cure I assumed it was. Sitting and laying around make the first steps back up worse, not better. The thing I kept prescribing myself, taking it easy, is the thing that makes it bite hardest.
Why I am writing this down instead of just trying harder
Because “suck it up” is the default setting for a lot of us, and two months of it has bought me exactly nothing. I maintain everything else I own on a schedule. The truck gets oil before it begs for it. The tools get cleaned. The body, the one machine that carries my kids to their games and my gear up the stairs on a call, gets ignored until it limps.
So this series starts with the foot, and it starts with a test, run the same way we run everything on this site: honestly, on a clock, with the results published either way.
For the next 30 days I am actually doing the standard, commonly recommended things dads in this spot get told to try, the boring physical stuff, consistently instead of whenever I remember:
- Morning stretch before the first step: towel stretch, pull the toes back, hold 30 seconds, three times, before I stand.
- Twice a day, standing calf stretch, wall, 30 seconds each side.
- Foot roll, tennis ball, a few minutes, plus a frozen bottle roll after long days.
- Icing the heel area after long days, 10 to 15 minutes, never directly on skin.
- Insoles and shoes every day, not barefoot on hard floors first thing in the morning, and no flat shoes for long walks.
Thirty days from now I will publish what changed and what did not, including if the answer is “nothing, and I went and got it looked at.” Because here is the other honest line: two months without improvement is exactly the point where the standard advice stops being “try stuff at home” and starts being “let a professional put hands on it.” If the test fails, that is the next step, and I will write that article too.
If your heel is doing what mine is doing, you do not need my permission to skip the two months of sucking it up. Learn from the cheap seats: start the boring stuff now, and if it is not improving, get it looked at sooner than I did.
Next in Maintenance: shoulders and neck, the other two entries on my own list.