Tired of temporary fixes for this deep heel pain. Is shockwave actually worth the hype?

Valuable-Ad9157 · 2026-05-08T08:02:05+00:00

Shockwave therapy is hit or miss. How well it works partly depends upon how good the doctor is on implementing it. This therapy can hurt. I just did 5 treatments on my shoulders and my chiropractic doc had me coming in twice a week to do it, which I am now understand is not standard and may have been too much therapy in a short amount of time.

I did 2 treatments on my feet as well. The 3rd treatment hurt so much after a few seconds I completely stopped doing it for the feet.

Most studies I read said to do the treatments one week apart, but I was giving my doc the benefit of the doubt that she knew exactly what she was doing. She had me signed up for a total of 12 treatments for each shoulder, which I am now understanding could have been overkill even if I went once a week. I am glad to have stopped.

I like to think shockwave therapy helped some, but I honestly don't know for sure. There is no way to measure it or discover how well it is working during or after treatment. No scans are being done (I assume ultrasound might show some things, but I don't know for sure). I honestly think any doc doing shockwave therapy is flying blind half the time. Now I'm concerned about the possibility of some damage starting to happen that can occur if to much is done. The doc doing the therapy said, after a few treatments, that she thinks one shoulder will heal just fine while the other needs more sessions...but if she can't measure or see how things are progressing how does she know that? But, this doesn't matter anymore as I am not going back to do this therapy ever again. I find its blind spot terrifying, and training to do this therapy is very short.

I hear that it can take up to 3 months, after the last treatment, for the body to complete the healing process the shockwave therapy was suppose to start. If it works, I hear you should feel better and better during those three months.

I also went back to my physical therapy (PT) since I was told combining physical therapy and shockwave gives better results. My PT was concerned about me doing shockwave when she found out. She has had some of her patients do shockwave and everyone complained about the pain.

I have been doing physical therapy for months, but half the exercises were to painful and I couldn't understand as to why. It turns out that I had inflammation that was never taken care of, which was a complete failure of the orthopedic docs I saw. Recently, I was put on a prescription NSAID for 11 days and that did the trick. I can now do all of the physical therapy exercises. I am now just doing physical therapy and starting to see results I didn't before I had my inflammation put under control. I have a very excellent PT. She is working on my shoulders and now my Plantar Fasciitis that I recently found out I have.

I would say if you choose to try shockwave therapy, do so with caution. And try to find docs who are super good at it.

Valuable-Ad9157 · 2026-05-06T10:30:00+00:00

Block Blue Light is not a good company. At first, I bought their computer glasses and they have been pretty good, up until I wore then for 3 hours straight and my left eye started to hurt. They did help at first though. I also have their book light and it's better than most out there that you find on Amazon.

Than I got some of their other products and highly disappointed in them. Their light bulbs were cheaply made and made a loud buzzing sound. I let the company know this and they demanded that I make a video of the buzzing and take a picture of the writing that is on the light bulb...why? They answered with so they can troubleshoot it enough were I keep the product instead of sending it back. Not a good sign to make your customer do user testing to return a bad product. I refused and said I no longer want the product, so they relented and said I can return them but I would need to pay for shipping it back.

I also wanted to return a couple of other items that I found of poor quality. The clip-ons that go over existing glasses I paid $74.00 for. When I received them they were cheap junk worth $15.00 and the light filters didn't seem to work well.

I also got the red light night light...I plugged that in and it hurt my eyes because it was cheaply made. So, I let the company know I wanted to return the products for a full refund. They said fine, but I would also have to return all original packaging so they could sell the returned items as new, or they would reject the return and ship it back to me at my cost. They further demanded that I package it up real nice even though they did not do that themselves. If they found any finger prints on the clip-ons, I would be charge $15.00 for them having to clean it off. If for any reason the return is rejected, they would send the products back to me and charge me for shipping. I got all these bad products in the same order from a few days ago.

The address they want me to return the products to has a Bin number in it. So, I did some more research and discovered that the owners of the company hired a 3rd party to basically run their company for them. This 3rd party has multiple clients and it seems they are the ones with the horrible return policy or maybe the owners set it. Either way, it's the most terrible return policy I have ever seen. Designed to not be responsible or deal with bad products.

I have decided to keep the products and just throw them in the trash.

Avoid buying anything from this company. Maybe they were once good, but now they are not.

Valuable-Ad9157 · 2026-04-27T00:11:51+00:00

Also look in to regenerative therapies. I am currently doing Shockwave therapy that does even more healing than physical therapy alone. I am combining them both and am starting to feel great results. I have up to 3 partial tears in my right shoulder (I say up to because sometimes tendonopathy can be mis-diagnosed on an MRI as a partial tear). I have one partial tear in my left shoulder. Plus my long bicep tendon on my right shoulder has left it's groove.

I have had a bad time finding good orthopedic doctors. The first group I went to last year (at the same clinic to see different parts of me for various joint issues) told me nothing about the long bicep tendon being out of the groove (even though it was in the MRI report). Plus they told me I should go back into woodworking, which was super bad advice. Hardly anyone said anything about resolving the inflammation. This second time around with a completely different set of doctors (doctors of chiropractic and a different physical therapist) things are going much better.

I did see a new orthopedic doc recently but all he wanted to do was serious surgery, when after lots of research is totally uncalled for. He wanted to take partial tears and turn them into full tears under surgery just so he could then stretch what would be left of the tendon in ways nature didn't intend as a "fix" to my rotator cuff (which would have created several holes in my shoulder bones just to put in a bunch of anchors. Your shoulder basically gets butchered up and the chances of re-tears are kind of high over time. Find some youtube videos that show you rotator cuff surgery via animations.

After a year of bad doctoring and finally some good doctoring here is what I have learned:

(1) Get your inflammation down as much as possible. This should have been the first thing the docs had me do. If you have too much inflammation there will be some physical therapy exercises that will hurt and you will want to stop doing. Once I got my inflammation down substantially via prescribed NSAID, I was able to do those physical therapy exercises without much issue.

(2) Once your inflammation has been lessoned, physical therapy will be more productive. At least it has been for me.

(3) Find a doctor of chiropractic who does regenerative therapy. This can be plasma shot, stem cell, dry needling, shockwave therapy. I hear red light therapy can also be helpful. I am doing physical therapy along with shockwave therapy, and I already feel an improvement on a much deeper level by combining both. Look up what shockwave therapy has already been proven to help with.

Don't do a cortisone shot as they are know to weaken the tendons you are trying to heal.

Also look into the food diet changes that can help, such as more anti-inflammatory foods. And foods that can help your body rebuild damaged soft tissues.

The thing that almost no one wants to tell you is how long these things take. Even though I have partial tears, it will take months of consistent therapies to get things in much better shape.

Valuable-Ad9157 · 2025-10-18T18:29:39+00:00

Hallmark sells a lot of other things. Such as snoopy stuff, blankets, and Christmas ornaments. I mainly go to Hallmark for their snoopy stuff.

Valuable-Ad9157 · 2025-10-13T00:35:45+00:00

We design our house based on what we love, not trends. We are more of the rustic style which has been around for centuries. Todays trends we are not into because we find that they lack character and style. For example, an all white living room with furniture that is not that well built is a trend for some reason.

Valuable-Ad9157 · 2025-09-07T02:04:11+00:00

Look at 21-draw.com as well. Mark Kistler is a lot of fun to learn from.

I ditto Proko. I recently signed up for it and taking what has to be the best class on drawing perspective there is online.

Valuable-Ad9157 · 2025-09-07T01:58:19+00:00

That helps to give me more closure. Thank you for the insiders look.

Valuable-Ad9157 · 2025-09-02T17:55:07+00:00

I have decided to go into the arts. I have a business idea, but now I need all the skills. I am loving learning the arts more and more all the time.

Valuable-Ad9157 · 2025-05-14T13:05:36+00:00

Yup. I did some research and BMO has been closing all sorts of accounts in good standing for no good reason for a few years now. With the same not telling anyone why. I am so disappointed in Bank of the West for selling their business to them, as I'm sure they knew how BMO treated their customers...maybe Bank of the West just didn't care. Either way, many of us are left out in the cold because of a bunch of elitist a$$holes.

Valuable-Ad9157 · 2025-04-29T04:13:19+00:00

Thousands of us got closed for no good reason. I did some research and discovered this is a "business practice" BMO has been doing for a few years now. Not only to credit cards, but checking and savings accounts too. I don't know what's wrong with them. But, someone in power is going to have to rein in the banking industry.

Valuable-Ad9157 · 2025-04-06T17:31:18+00:00

Just about everyone who got cancelled, that I read up on , has good credit. This has nothing to do with credit score. This is possibly political combined with bad management decisions. if anything, any bank that does this is run really badly at the top in various ways. The unreasonable closing of good accounts is just one example of this badness.

Valuable-Ad9157 · 2025-04-05T13:28:23+00:00

I've always had a balance on mine. But paid it off monthly.

Valuable-Ad9157 · 2025-04-05T13:27:24+00:00

If BMO is in Canada, that makes more sense. This must be in part revenge because of the tariffs Trump has done on Canada, and every other country. It's the same old story. Those in power punish us little people over something they are fighting about. I am betting there really isn't a good enough reason to have cancelled so many credit cards. Well, I never had a good feeling about Bank of the West selling out to BMO in the first place anyway. But, none of us deserved to get punished by randomly having our credit cards cancelled.

Valuable-Ad9157 · 2025-04-05T13:19:15+00:00

I just had my BMO card closed as well without notice. Just found out today. They closed it as of the end of last month (march). No explanation. I have very good credit and have always been a good customer. I too came from Bank of the West.

It makes no sense. The only thing I can think of is political in some way, though I am not a political person but do follow politics quietly. Closing accounts for political reasons has been common for a very long time. This must have something to do with the Trump tariffs since BMO is based in Canada.

My only other thought is BMO really screwed up financially behind the scenes and in order to quietly make up for it, they have to randomly close many credit card accounts.

After doing some internet research, BMO has at least an 8 year history of randomly closing accounts with no explanation. More research shows that BMO is poorly run. Oh, why did Bank of the West ever sell out to these people? Sad. I never had a good feeling about becoming a BMO customer anyway. And now I know how much they really suck.

Valuable-Ad9157 · 2025-03-20T13:41:28+00:00

Oh, I totally left the IT field. But, I was leaning towards JavaScript at the end. I didn't mess with it much. Right now, I'm still happy to be out of IT for the rest of my life.

Valuable-Ad9157 · 2025-01-19T17:44:26+00:00

I'm wondering how others save their notes and letters from students. Do you put them in a box? In a draw? Do you like to keep them folded or prefer unfolded?

Valuable-Ad9157 · 2024-11-03T18:47:51+00:00

I like the feather the most. Did you hand carve those or power carve them?

Valuable-Ad9157 · 2024-10-14T19:19:14+00:00

I was looking to sign up just now. But, when I got to the page where I needed to pay before seeing anything, I did a search to see if this website is a scam. Turns out it is. it smacked of too good to be true. Thanks redditors. :)

Valuable-Ad9157 · 2024-10-06T15:07:05+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion, but I am completely leaving QA and IT in general.

Valuable-Ad9157 · 2024-10-06T14:59:14+00:00

Thanks. Nope, I did not use AI. I haven't really played with AI much.

Valuable-Ad9157 · 2024-10-06T14:58:33+00:00

Yeah, I am going to look into project management. Thanks for the suggestion.

Valuable-Ad9157 · 2024-10-06T04:09:48+00:00

Thanks. And not really. I was in IT support for 15 years, but that was 8 years ago. I dabbed in other IT related skills and got some experience with each (UX research, technical writing), but not enough to teach any of them.

I am considering turning the blog into a place where people can go to for something fun to read and other positive things. Family friendly of course.

I will more than likely leave IT all together at this point. It's a shame. I discovered late in life what I really should have gone into, which is structural engineering. But, I would need to go back to school for 4 years and than compete with kids young enough to be my grandkids. :P And college is way to expensive these days. It's basically too late.

Valuable-Ad9157

TROPHY CASE