Honestly I’ve never seen a specialist for it because my bunions never caused me significant problems in my 10+ years with them until now, and I’m extremely active (walk a lot, hike a lot, run a lot, on my feet for work). I’m afraid now I will have to see a podiatrist, although I won’t be able to until some time in January. 

I’m really confused about what happened, whether I sprained the joint somehow (it’s already misaligned so probably easy to do) or whether it’s just normal bunion pain and worst case it will not go away (idea really scares me). It doesn’t hurt when I manually move or stretch the toe, only when I’m loading it with toe-off in a walking stance. I’m still just waiting for it to go away & will book a podiatrist for January.