My name is the doctor. This is how people call me when they come looking for my help. I live in Gruanda – a small kingdom, no one have heard of. unless you heard stories about our crazy king – Rudolf.
Our dearly beloved king is quite crazy. Every once in a while he comes up with those crazy rules, aimed to make the life of the people in his kingdom (especially women) more and more difficult.
Unlike other kings, Rudolf have the weirdest rules that don’t make any sense, but do make you suffer!
Why? I don’t know, I guess this is why they call him “the crazy king”.
As for myself, I just try and help people live under his rules.
The most recent rule our king came with, a year ago, was the rule that forced every women in the kingdom to wear shoes that are no longer than 24 cm. He didn’t tell us why or how come, just the rule that a shoe’s “foot print” can not exceed 24 cm and must be of a certain square type – similar to worker’s boots. If you were found using different type of shoes – you might spend your days in jail, and would be confined to smaller shoes + a decent fine.
This might not seem like a curl rule, but what happened was that all shoe manufactures started making only one type of shoes that should have fitted all.
The main problem was, as you might have guessed, that not all women have feet that fit in a 24 cm shoe (size 8 US)!
Some, who had a bit larger feet, could still cram their feet into an 8 size shoe, but many didn’t, and they came to me for help. These are some of the stories of the women who came to my clinic.
Doris
Doris was one of the first ones who came. She had a lovely size 10 feet and no matter how much she tried, she couldn’t fit her feet into a size 8 shoes.
I tried several ideas and eventually we decided to tie her big toe so it would be pushed towards her little toes (like in a pointy shoe), by doing so I was able to make her feet a bit smaller and allowing it to fit in the smaller shoe.
Several days ago Doris came to visit me. On the one hand, she was quite happy. My “toe tieing’ worked like a charm (I told her it would) and both her big toes leaned more and more sideways, making her foot reduce their size. One the other hand, they were starting to put more and more pressure upon her smaller toes, making them bend more and more. She was terrified seeing her toes staying deformed even outside her shoes but couldn’t do anything about it, without being punished by the king’s police.
I examined her toes carefully. Her big toe was pushing her smaller toes hard. Her second toe was totally hammered, and compressed by her big toe. Her smaller toes were pushed sideways and bent down by the pressure of the shoes. It was obvious that corns would soon come and that as the time passes by, they would become rigid – making the process irreversible.
I understood Doris concerns, but the alternative was to chop off her toes – which was something I did only in the most extreme situations.
Seeing her toes starting to deform Doris started crying. I gave her some exercises to keep her toes flexible, but in my heart knew it was In vane.
Ann
Ann was a lovely little teenager with a 9 size feet.
Her mother brought her over, since she had noticed her daughter toes were starting to look weird.
As I was examining her feet, I noticed that her although her feet measured 24 cm from heel to the big toe, her second and third toe added another 3 cm, being longer than her big toe.
As a result of being pushed hard against an 8 size boot, her toes began to hammer, and adding two new corns on each toe.
I examined Ann’s toes. Her toes were still flexible, but I could see that her muscles were already keeping them hammered while flexed. Although Ann didn’t seem to be too much concerned about her feet. Her mother, on the other hand, seemed very concerned that her daughters feet are going to be deformed. As with Doris, I told the mother, that nothing can be done ( except for amputation” as thus is the king’s ruling and how ‘nature’ takes its course…
In most of my patients, hammertoes were the regular ‘solution’ to larger feet ‘situations’. With some the squeezing of the feet caused even toes to bend down completely (making the last knuckle to touch the ground), but the most interesting was the big toe.
Big toes tended to act in various ways when put under pressure. Some moved sideways, tweeds the smaller toes, usually creating a small or big bunion in the process. Some bent sideways at the second knuckle, instead of the first, and some became hammer.
Nevertheless, the main problem was any angling of the big toe which, in turn, influenced the smaller toe. Whenever the big toe moved (to compensate for the smaller space) the second, and sometimes the third toe “took the biting”. Sometimes they would hammer, overlap (or even both). It was rare to see angled big toes without any influence on the smaller toes, even if they were shorter than the big toe. The longer the big toe was, the more it influenced the smaller toes.
Tina
Tina was a special case for me, although I later met more girls in her condition.
Tina was a very tall women, with a foot measuring a whopping size 43!
As you can imagine. The normal methods I used in the past (as bonding the big toe) couldn’t work in her case. It was either she lost her feet or I had to come up with a new idea.
The idea I thought about was to create a high heel within the boot (similar to sport heels I saw in the past). I have added an internal 5″ heel which meant she could barely fit her foot inside the standard 24cm boot. To help her feel a bit more comfortable, a narrowed the inside of the shoe, to simulate a pointy she – which made her long bit toe move aside and take less space.
Although it wasn’t the most comfortable she to wear, it was better to have no feet at all.
I made these shoes for Tina 2 years ago, and today she arrived for a new set of shoes.
When she took down her shoes, I was amazed at the shape her feet have taken.
Tina’s feet were now shaped like a high heel foot, with her heel up in the air and her toes bent sideways. When barefoot, she could only walk on her tiptoes, which was difficult for her, due to the pressure that her big toe put on her smaller toes.
Although her second toe wasn’t longer than her big toe, the pressure from her big toe meant that it was now hammered and squeezed by the big toe to a stage you couldn’t see here nail.
Her third and forth toes were compressed sideways with their last knuckle pressed down.
It was amazing what have happened to her feet in just two years.
Tina was also very concerned by her feet, she showed me how her second toes are squashed by her big toe and how she could move them to relief the pressure.
She cried telling me how beautiful her feet used to be – which now were a mess. She was also afraid she could only walk on her tiptoes. I couldn’t promise her anything, but I knew only a miracle would make her heels touch the ground again.