♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists on the internet ♪
- Hi, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And together we are
the most famous physical therapists on the internet.
- I know, opinion of course. - Ah, Brad, this has happened
to probably almost all of us.
You're getting up at night, you stub your toe, you know,
and what should you do after that?
Do you need to see a doctor?
Is it broken?
You know, how do you treat it?
- Right. - So this we're gonna try
to give you some guidelines. - And that hurts, Bob.
- Oh, it hurts, 'cause I've done it.
- Yeah.
- And I want to-
- It feels like it's broke on all of 'em, you know?
- Yeah. - But a lot of times it's not.
- Yeah, and I'll go through my scenario too,
- Okay. - with what happened.
But when you stub your toe,
if you first hear like a pop or a snap,
there's more likely that you broke it.
- Okay. - If you hear the sound.
If you look at the toe and it's bent,
- Yeah.
- I mean, I'm not gonna say obvious,
but to some people they may not think of it.
If it's kind of bent one side or another-
- Right.
- It's probably broke. - Yeah.
- And you need to go in then.
- Yep.
- If there's bruising and swelling the next day,
doesn't mean it's broke,
but it's again, getting more likely.
- Right.
- Even if there's bruising and swelling in the toenail.
- Okay.
- It's getting more likely.
Mine did bruise up.
I don't know if mine was ever broke, to be honest,
I didn't go in.
- Sure.
- But if it keeps going on for several days,
you need to go in if the pain-
- Right.
- and the swelling.
- Not that they're gonna put a cast on it,
but there may be some treatment to help it out.
- Right.
And there are times if it's broken to the joint,
you know, you're more susceptible to early arthritis.
So that, you know, you wanna have it treated right.
And sometimes if there's really pinpoint pain,
that means it's broke too,
as opposed to really diffuse and spread out.
- Sure.
- So the statement that,
if you can walk on it, it's not broken.
That's not true.
You might be able to walk on it, and it's still broken.
So don't be relying on that either.
- Sure.
- So what are you gonna do for treatment?
You know, the first thing you wanna, probably,
keep the weight off the toe for a while.
- Right. - You know, using crutches,
or a cane or something, just trying to-
- The old RICE.
- Right.
- Rest it, ice it,
- Yep, elevation.
- Yep, it's kind hard to compress it,
it's kind of hard to wrap it.
- I wouldn't worry about the C, which is compression.
- Right. - I wouldn't do that,
but yeah, I'd go and ice it.
The thing that I did, and a lot of people will do,
they'll take tape,
and so let's say this is the broken toe,
they'll tape it to the toe right next to 'em.
They just do, go ahead, buddy splint it, that they call it.
- Sure.
- So they tape 'em together in a comfortable way,
so you don't get tingling or numbness,
and you hold 'em together,
and that kinda supports that one-
- Right. - and keeps it out of trouble.
- Don't tape it too tight.
Just- - Right.
- It's gotta be loose. - Yes.
- Yeah, just so they're held together.
- Yeah. It should be comfortable.
- Yeah.
- And you don't wanna see your toes turning blue.
- Right, don't let your brother take
the electrician's tape and tighten it up,
good and tight.
- You sound like you have experience with that solve.
All right, the next thing you're gonna do
is you're gonna go ahead,
and this just happened to my daughter, in fact.
What we had her do is she took an old tennis shoe,
and she cut out the toe here.
Can you see that Larnie?
Yeah. Down.
- [Larnie] Yeah.
- Duh, duh, duh.
And what, you know, that did,
that took pressure off the toe,
because a lot of times you put your foot in a shoe,
and it's gonna be like a constant pressure
on the toe. - Right.
Especially if it's swollen up, it's tender,
and then you're just gonna irritate it.
- Even better is what we call, I don't know.
We call 'em a reese shoe, R-E-E-S-E shoe.
But this has an open toe, it's after surgery,
and what's nice about this,
- The sole. - The sole is real stiff.
- Down, Bob, bring it down. - I'm a tall guy.
So it's real stiff,
so the toe's not bending when you step on it.
- Right.
- I got one on here. (drowning out Bob speaking)
You can clearly see the toe is exposed.
And the nice thing about this, if you do bump it,
with any luck you, hit this and you protect the toe.
- Right?
- Yeah. We call 'em ortho shoes.
- Okay. You call 'em reese shoes?
- Yeah. It's just a brand name.
- Call it whatever you want.
They're nice.
You can get 'em at...
A lot of pharmacies will have 'em.
- Yeah, you can probably order online very easily too.
So the last thing I wanna talk about, Brad,
is if let's say three, four weeks have gone by,
and it wasn't broken, and you're still having some pain,
because this is what happened to me.
- Yeah.
- And I was like, "Why am I still having pain?"
- Yeah.
- And what turned out is I think,
quite often when you injure the toe,
you also injure the tendon.
And so the tendon that runs along the toe,
and it gets, there's some scar tissue in it.
So Brad's gonna show on his toe.
- Yeah, I'm not taking my sock off for-
(speakers drowning out each other)
- Right along in there.
So what we do, which we often do for a thing like this
is we do cross-fiber massage.
So I'm gonna come back up to you. Am I too high again?
Right about there.
So you just really kind of aggressively,
you're gonna go across the tendon,
especially if you find a tender spot.
- [Brad] Okay, Bob, I'm taking my sock off.
You can't do it - Oh, good Lord.
- to your finger.
Yes you can.
- Well, I know, but look at this.
- [Bob] All you do is this for like five minutes.
- I did two treatments of it, and the pain was gone.
- [Brad] So you just went like this?
- Yup.
- Right over the toe.
Just right, you can do it with your thumb?
- Yep. - Really aggressive.
You're breaking up the scar tissue.
- Yeah. - And then that scar tissue
doesn't give you any paining.
- Yeah.
So by this time, your toe was not so painful,
the swelling was down?
Yeah, there was just some tight scratches.
- There were some lovely toes.
- Yeah. That is.
That happens when you get over 50. It's terrible.
- Thanks for watching folks.