Almost a year ago I was bit by a brown recluse spider on my left ankle. This was one of the most painful experiences of my life. The small spider bite opened into an ulcer over an inch across. Within a few days of the bite I had a skin infection which spread up my leg.
After much bed rest with an elevated foot, painkillers, and two rounds of antibiotics, not to mention a wretched emergency room visit, the wound healed. It took about a month and a half for the wound to heal and about that much time for me to be able to walk again easily. I was lucky as I healed quite quickly and my scarring is fairly minimal.
So what does this have to do with a shoe review? Well, though it has been almost a year I still experience fairly constant heel pain. Rather intense pain that affects most of my left heel and parts of my ankle. Without health insurance I have no options other than to live with it. Living with it has meant giving up my cute shoes for comfortable shoes. This has been a fairly difficult thing for me. While I’m by no means a woman who owns hundreds of shoes I do like shoes. I’ve always had a fairly small collection of well curated boots and flats.
Since the bite I have been searching and searching for the most comfortable shoes for my condition. The first adequate shoe I tried were Kalso Earth shoes. I bought a pair of sandals from them that kept my pain to a minimum but they could not hold up to the rough terrain of Arizona and were in fairly rough shape after only 2 months of wear.
Sometime in the spring I decided to expand my search and ended up at a shoe store in Tucson, Arizona which focused on walking shoes and such. I tried on lots of shoes and they were ok. Then I tried on this shoe:
These sandals are slightly different than mine.
When I slipped these shoes on immediately my legs relaxed and the throbbing in my heel eased. Looking at my my feet my heart sunk a bit though. These are definitely not my style and very expensive considering I don’t find them terribly attractive. I could not ignore how much better my foot felt though. So I bought them.
I have been amazed at how much these shoes ease my heel pain. Out of vanity and a desire for warmth I also bought a pair of Earth boots around the same time. Most days I wear the boots outside of the house and just wear the sandals around the house. By the end of a day of wearing the boots I really regret it. My heel is throbbing through the night. On the days that I slip into my Zieras first thing and stay in them all day my foot feels great.
