Maintenance is where Second Shift Dad covers the body the way we cover the truck: what breaks, what it feels like, and what actually gets it back on the road. This is my experience and general information, not medical advice. If something on your body is getting worse instead of better, get it looked at by a professional. That rule applies to me too, and this article is partly me saying that out loud.
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 to suck up the pain.
No stretches. No icing. No plan. I wear good boots: Ariat pull-ons for work around home, Merrell side-zips or Haix boots on shift, On Cloud tennis shoes the rest of the time. The one tool I own that genuinely helps once I am walking, glycerin-filled insoles from Foot Relief Insoles that I have had since I was 22, I do not even wear regularly, and they are not in my duty boots. Good footwear is the one thing I had already done right by accident, and it has not fixed this, because footwear alone is not a treatment. It is just not making it worse.
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 instead of just living with it
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.
The 30-day test
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:
- Stretching the calves and the foot itself, daily, especially before the first steps after rest.
- Rolling the foot on a frozen water bottle after shifts.
- No barefoot miles on hard floors at home. Shoes or supportive footwear on, like it is a rule.
- Keeping the good footwear rotation I already have, and paying attention to which pair the foot likes best after a long sit.
- Tracking it: rating the first-steps pain each day, so “feels better” is a record and not a mood.
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.