By Debbie Neumayer
Cherie Guzman almost went under the knife to save her feet. Born with a “bad left foot” she says she inherited from her mom who also had the same problem, Cherie could barely walk by the time she came across the New Feet Store. She grew up in North Dakota and walked everywhere without proper shoes. By the time she was an adult, her arches had fallen and Cherie was limping around, trying to find relief. She spent hundreds of dollars on prescription orthotics that didn’t fit and were uncomfortable. She spent additional money on unattractive custom shoes that she dubbed “grandma shoes” only because she thought they would help. Since she enjoyed wearing pretty shoes, this was especially difficult to endure. In the summer of 2009, while taking her granddaughter sightseeing in Las Vegas, the navicular bone in her ankle dropped. The pain was so excruciating that she rushed to her physician. He told her that her ligaments were shot. The doctor said, “You need surgery to put titanium in your foot and you will need a brace for the rest of your life.”
Cherie is a professional massage therapist and couldn’t afford to take precious time away from work to recuperate from surgery. She also couldn’t accept the lifelong sentence of a brace, so she started looking at other alternatives. Cherie reports that during this time her foot hurt so badly that “it felt like I was walking on tacks.” Her left foot pronated (turned in)…
