ooh, this is going to be SUPER interesting. 
*eyeroll*
i am recently outfooted with some stuff to make my heel issues better (and pocketbook less better). maybe 10 years ago or so, plantar fasciitis reared its ugly head in both my heels. i’d roll out of bed in the morning cringing at the knowledge that i’d end up wanting to crawl to the bathroom. 
for those who have never experiences PF, imagine a million tiny pins inserting themselves into your heel every time you walked on it. got it? good.
i’d tiptoe, roll to the side of my foot, hop, grab the wall and drag myself out of bed in the mornings, and gradually the pain subsides. but this is a huge pain in the foot! and i dealt with it for a while because it wasn’t life or death. 
then i started running, lost some weight, and the PF went away in the left foot. fantastic! still hung around in the right for some reason. 
and finally i’d had enough – i was at the point where long mileage running wasn’t unheard of, and the pain in my heel was getting really annoying. so i saw a podiatrist in rochester about the PF. 
i have a giant, level 5 heel spur in my right foot (level 5 is the worst). he prescribed custom orthotics (expensive and didn’t do too much). stretching (already doing it with running). icing (already doing it when the foot pain was horrible after running). did this a while and i requested a cortisone shot. 
THAT was great. my foot felt awesome, like my other foot. but after about 6 months, it started to have shooting pains up my foot and into my toes. so i went back to the podiatrist, and he immediately gave me another shot, which immediately turned out to be a bad idea.
when you get a shot in your foot, it’s like you’re trying to walk on a giant wad of something, and it’s not a great feeling. the first shot i got, this feeling lasted about a week before it was gone. the second one, it lasted about three weeks, then the effectiveness of the shot lasted another three. (thankfully, my half marathon was in there.)
i’m not sure what happened with that shot, but it was NOT good. so i didn’t got back to that podiatrist.

this morning i went to the central MN foot and ankle clinic, where i was HOPING to get a nice diagnosis of YES LET’S SAW OFF THAT SPUR! but nope. instead i got more lessons in stretching (yawn), a night splint, a referral to PT, and a high-dose ibuprofin prescription (anti-inflammatory). oh, and the charge to stop running. 

>:|

sorry, but the running goes on. i should have told her that i’m not a heel striker when i run, but i didn’t think of it until after i left. but, i am going to stop running for long distances for a while to see if that will help. generally, two miles is fine on the foot, but get up to about 4 miles or farther, and my foot gets pretty aggravated.
so, the foot saga continues. we’ll see how the night splint helps out.