Half a year after I began Irish dancing I was allowed to start learning hard shoe dances. Irish dance has two different kinds of shoes, hard shoe and soft shoe. Soft shoes are similar to a ballet slipper and made of leather while hard shoes are similar to tap shoes but use a thick layer of pixie glass instead of a thin sheet of steel and have high heels. Unlike in soft shoe where I could dance for the full hour and a half of class in hard shoes I was unable to dance for long as my feet would start hurting. More often than not I would take off my shoes to find them an angry red and swollen. The arches of my feet giving off a roaring pain that was under my skin. On some days it hurt so bad I could practically feel the muscles rolling in protest to the pain I was already feeling but instead of helping it worsened it making my feet more tender. I would sometimes leave the class limping due to the pain. At first we thought that my feet were simply not used to the exercises and that it would go away as I got used to it. That learning to use muscles I rarely used before so I could treble or that I had never walked in high heels was the cause of it. That the pain would leave as my muscles grew stronger and my heels grew calluses to deal with it. However as time went on it only got worse.

My parents began to worry about what was causing the pain because "your feet need to last you a lifetime" as they like to say. Thinking that maybe I had twisted my ankle or one of the many bones in my feet had been knocked out of place from one of the numerous times I had kicked my own feet on accident. We went to see our chiropractor. Our chiropractor had me stand up in front of a mirror and take my shoes and socks off. He circled me inspecting the way I stood with a critical eye and a friendly smile. After a moment he turned to my parents and said it was no surprise that I was having foot pains, I was flat footed. To demonstrate his point he put his knuckles under my foot forcing it to have an arch and I watched the mirror in amazement as the simple change forced my leg to straighten out bringing to attention that I had a slight knock knee due to the evident lack of arch. Flat feet are known to cause knee and ankle pain due to it causing changes in the legs' alignment so we assumed it was what was causing the pain. We were told that a simple over the counter orthotic would fix it.

Despite now having orthotics in my shoes giving me the arches I was lacking my feet were still in flames when I danced. It felt like I was the evil queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, forced to dance in red hot iron shoes pulled straight from the fiery coals. I continued to return home with thick swollen feet that would have imprints of my fingers when I poked at them, unable to tell if I was adding to the pain I was already feeling or not.

My father drove me to the hospital but didn't tell me what for. I wasn't sick so I knew it wasn't that. I was taken into a large white room. The doctor asked me to take off my shoes and socks and to lay down on the table. The doctor placed a heavy lead smock on top of me before leaving the room with my father in tow. There were whirring noises as the machine above me that I had neglected to notice before started to do something. I didn't know what it was doing. I didn't recognize it as having any resemblance to anything I had ever seen previously when I went to the doctors. All I knew was that I wasn't allowed to move. Despite the heavy material on me, the hard table below me, and the strange sounds coming from the machine I was not allowed to move. My gut screamed at me to move, that something was wrong, that I was in danger, my brain told me to stay, to wait, because the doctor told me to. I didn't realize I was holding my breath until the doctor came back in and I felt myself finally releasing it. We were taken back to the waiting room, they didn't tell me what the machine did, I didn't ask.

I distracted myself from the boring wait and the burning questions I refused to voice for fear of bothering someone by going over my dance steps: treble one, treble two, treble one two three four, treble one, treble two, treble one two three four, hop, hop back, tip up down, tip up down, treble one, treble two, treble one two three four, treble one, treble two, treble one two three four, treble one, treble two, treble one two three four, hop, hop back, tip up down, tip up down, treble one, treble two, treble one two three four, hop, hop back, hop back two three four, hop, hop back, hop back two three four, treble one, treble two, treble one two three four, hop, hop back, hop back two three four, hop, hop back, hop back two three four, hop, hop back, hop back two three four, treble one, treble two, treble one two three four, hop, hop back, hop back two three four. I continued to repeat the steps like a mantra in my mind, my hands moving in my lap mimicking the movements I would normally do with my feet.

Later, it could have been hours later, it could have been minutes, we were called by the doctor and led to another room. This room wasn't as large as the last and there was another smaller room attached to it with a glass window so people could see inside. The smaller room had computers and many other machines that I couldn't name if I tried. The larger room had a table that was attached to a large white cylindrical object. The doctor and my father went into the smaller room while I was swarmed by four nurses. They had me remove my shoes and socks again and lie down on the table. One nurse put another lead covering on my body, another nurse was clipping something onto my left index finger, and the other two were adjusting my feet as they saw fit and used a foam block to keep them in place taping my feet to it. They told me to do my best at staying still. One of the nurses then pushed a rubber ball that was attached to a tube into my right hand. She told me to squeeze it if it became too much and I wanted it to stop. I wanted to squeeze it the second she told me what it was for. Everything was already too much. But I forced my hand to go lax around it and nodded my head.

When they deemed me ready for whatever it was that they wanted me for they left the room. I stared up at the blank ceiling trying to distract myself. Then the table began to move. It began to slide into the large cylindrical object, with me on it. The table stopped when I was halfway inside. Then the noises started. Humming and whirring coming from the large white machine as it did something. My muscles tensed as I tried to stay still, my hand cramped around the ball despite my efforts to keep it lax so as to not bother anyone. I tried to distract myself, closing my eyes I went back to going over my steps in my head. Tapping my finger to the beat of imaginary music, trying to convince myself I wasn't in a dark room, half way into a large machine, held down by a lead blanket, with my feet tied together with tape, in an overly sterile room, with nothing but the strange noises surrounding me. Trying to pretend that I was back in the dance studio with its permanently dusty floor, ugly carpet covered wall, a tacky disco ball, loud music, friends and teachers.

When the machine finally stopped making noise and the table moved back out and the nurses untied my feet, I couldn't jump off of the table fast enough. They took back the ball on the tube and the lead blanket. They gave me back my shoes and socks and told me I was "such a brave girl" but offered no explanations.

Later I learned those machines were a kind of x-ray I had never seen before and an MRI. It was found that I had an accessory navicular, an extra bone or piece of cartilage found above the arch on the inside of the foot, in each foot.

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