Galveston County Daily News
Oct. 8, 2007
UTMB's maritime clinic, which contracts with cruise ships to provide medical care for employees, comes to the rescue of a cruise ship worker with metatarsalgia, a painful foot condition. The article quotes Pamela Kuchta, outpatient nursing program manager.
By Rhiannon Meyers
The Daily News
Published October 8, 2007
GALVESTON - Ten-hour shifts on her feet plus years of wearing high heels equaled excruciating foot pain for Maria Leon of Peru.
Leon is a stateroom attendant on the Carnival Conquest. For months, she cleaned rooms and waited tables on the cruise ship despite the torturous pain in both of her feet. Her goal was to earn enough money so she could get her master's degree in business administration in Peru.
Every step was uncomfortable - working on her feet was almost unbearable, Leon said.
The Carnival Conquest's on-ship physician diagnosed Leon with plantar fasciitis, a common foot ailment caused by inflammation of the tissue that runs along the bottom of the foot, connecting the heel bone to toes, according to the Mayo Clinic.
When the ship docked in Cozumel, doctors prescribed Leon with anti-inflammatory medicines.
They didn't help.
Eventually, Leon ended up at The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston where she was seen by emergency orthopedic surgeon Kelly Carmichael. He diagnosed Leon with metatarsalgia - pain and inflammation in the balls of feet caused by stress on the metatarsals - the long bones in the front of the feet below the toes, according to the Mayo Clinic. The condition typically affects high-impact sports athletes, or in Leon's case, those who don tower-high heels.
The University of Texas Medical Branch operates a maritime clinic which contracts with cruise ships to provide medical care for employees.
Medical branch doctors and nurses can communicate with the ship's physicians via e-mail 24 hours a day, said Pam Kuchta of the maritime clinic. When ships dock in Galveston, medical branch doctors can treat the cruise ship employees.
The ships pay health care bills for employees who eat, sleep and thrive on the 70,000-ton cruise ships. After Leon was diagnosed with metatarsalgia, the maritime clinic helped coordinate the effort to get her special shoes to reduce the pressure on her feet.
Last week, Leon was fitted by a prosthetics store in Galveston for the specialized shoes, commonly used by diabetics who typically have foot problems. The seamless custom-fitted pair of black Mary Janes with special foam inserts hardly look different from their counterparts on department store shelves.
"Those are cute, Maria," Kuchta said.
"I know!" she replied.
Though she admits the new shoes feel a little weird, she's glad to rid herself of the foot pain.
"Oh," she said, clasping her hands to her chest. "I'm very happy."