Discussion: cracks

Don't expect to hide out from them in Connecticut. They have been a consistent welcome to the winter months here. After many painful years with them Rhonda convinced me to get a professional callus scraping, which seems to have helped quite a bit.

I think you're on the right track, Charlie. I've found that frequent foot washing only gets me so far, and when that isn't enough some neosporin covered by a band-aid often knocks the pain down quickly.

I also bought a cheap callus file in a drug store and occasionally file at my calluses when I remember to. (Read this in a book about foot care for athletes.) The theory is that if you keep at it and keep the calluses thin then you don't develop cracks to begin with.

A good dose of TX will cure many ailments, sort of like an enema.

Well this lady who attacked my feet did a lot of soaking and microplaning and ended up with quite a pile of stuff I am happy not to see again. It may just be some useful winter maintenance, and since I hadn't had this particular level of maintenance before, maybe next time the pile would be much smaller.

On my way to TX in 2 weeks, wasn't expecting it to cure any of my ailments.

TX just causes so many ailments that your previous ailments become so insignificant you think they're cured.

I have also gradually come to believe the underlying issue is calluses--creating an area vulnerable to cracking. And--funny enough--I reached that conclusion only about a week or so ago, after taking a closer look at my feet and where the cracks invariably appeared. Maybe it's only been in the past 10-20 years the calluses got thick enough to be an issue.

More evidence that I am a slow learner. I estimate that I will finally achieve cruising speed by the time I am 95 or so, while recognizing that might be a little bit optimistic from several considerations.

Got my heels planed again and it is pretty satisfactory. Certainly nothing left to crack, and by this time the practitioner was able to shave those things right down to regular old skin. Probably the first time anything like that has been seen on my heels since around 1960, I would think. Very comfortable.