My wife was born with flat feet. Unfortunately, her job required her to stand at a store entrance and “welcome a thousand customers with a smile.” For eight hours a day she could stand but could not sit. Her feet brought her endless trouble and pain.
They swelled as if an egg had been wrapped around each ankle. The pain made her tears flow inward. At work, she gritted her teeth and endured it, afraid that coworkers or supervisors might notice. After work, she would stagger into the house, collapse onto the sofa, and not want to move again.
She saw many doctors. Western doctors prescribed painkillers. Chinese doctors gave her huoluo pills, pain powders, kidney-tonifying medicines, and others. None helped. She also saw orthopedists, surgeons, and foot specialists, and even tried acupuncture, but nothing cured the problem.
Doctors suggested that she change jobs, stand less, and sit more. But my wife was already approaching sixty, and her English was not very good. Finding another job was easier said than done. For the sake of “five pecks of rice,” she had no choice but to grit her teeth and continue.
To reduce the pain, she tried every sort of medicated patch—plasters, chili patches, rheumatism patches, Salonpas, and other remedies. She rubbed on White Flower Oil, Red Flower Oil, liniment, and all kinds of medicinal oils. All these measures could relieve the pain temporarily, but once she returned to work after resting, her feet would swell and hurt again.
“It hurts so much I wish I could just die,” she once sobbed, tears running as she dragged those swollen, uncooperative feet.
The year before last, she began treatment at a rehabilitation center. A podiatrist made her a pair of custom plastic insoles and told her to stand on marbles for twenty minutes, then “pick the marbles up one by one with your toes and put them into another container.” He also instructed her to do squatting exercises and marble exercises every day.
At first, both of us were skeptical. Could stepping on a few marbles really do anything? But there was no better solution. So I went to a 99-cent store and bought my wife two bags of the glass marbles children play with. Every evening, while watching television, she stood on the marbles and exercised her feet.
It was remarkable. After several courses of this, her feet stopped swelling and hurting.
For more than two years now, she has continued her marble exercise every night. At work she no longer needs pain-relieving oils or medicated patches. Whenever she meets someone suffering from foot problems, she chatters away about her own experience and introduces them to the miraculous marble therapy.
As for the principle behind it, the two of us know only that it is a kind of foot massage. The detailed explanation can be left to specialists and doctors.
Originally published in the Americas Supplement.