Many people, including diabetics, fail to understand just how important and how vulnerable their feet are.

I grew up and spent most of my life in sunny Arizona. When not at work, church or anywhere in public, I was barefoot, like most everyone else was. As soon as I would get home from school or work, the shoes were the first thing to come off.

I’ll be 67 in less than a month and I still go barefoot most of the time, or should I say, I USED to go barefoot most of the time.

I’ve had dry feet my entire life. As a boy, my feet would peel flakes of dry dead skin. The trait seemed to run in my dad’s family and his feet and his dad’s feet were the same way.

In my mid-50s, I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes which was attributed to my being overweight and not eating a healthy diet. At first, my diabetes was controlled with diet, but like so many, I strayed from a healthy diet and now I take a mild medication to help control my blood glucose.

Over the past few years, my feet seemed to get drier, peel more, form harder callouses that would crack open. Usually when the cracks appear, I managed to control them by grinding down the hard callous and putting something on my feet at night that helped moisten the skin.

However, a couple of months ago, I developed a pair of deep cracks at the base of a big toe and nothing I did helped, so I ended up at a foot doctor. She ended up cutting out the plug between the two cracks and trimmed the callous surrounding them. She placed me in a surgical boot for a couple of weeks while the toe heeled.

After it heeled, I went back to going barefoot and the crack appeared again and bled. I treated it myself by bandaging it up and wearing the surgical boot for 2 weeks to prevent the toe from bending. This helped it to heal and yes, I went back to going barefoot and again the toe cracked open.

With the help of my wife, we trimmed the calloused edges and I’ve been wearing shoes all day long. Guess what, the crack is totally healed.

When I saw the foot doctor, she told me several things about taking care of my feet, especially since I am a diabetic. This is what she told me:

1- Stop going barefoot. Wear shoes all the time and this will help keep the skin on my feet from getting so dried and cracking. The feet of diabetics are especially susceptible to getting infections and some of these infections could result to the loss of the foot.

2- At night, smear the feet with something like petroleum jelly and then wrap them with clear plastic wrap and cover with a sock. Do this overnight and it will help stop the skin from peeling and flaking. WARNING – in a previous post, I talked about how Vick’s Vapor Rub helps keep the feet moist, but don’t use it if you are going to wrap the feet with plastic wrap as it could cause burns to the feet.

3- Do not cut the toenails too close to the quick on the edges. Ingrown toenails have led to many infections and loss of toes and feet in diabetics.

4- If something out of the normal happens to the foot or toes of a diabetic, see your doctor as soon as possible before it’s too late.

Consequently, my barefoot days are over and I have no choice but to get used to wearing shoes all the time. I can’t afford to lose my feet.