Hi! My name is Brachyfemme; I'm a twenty-something Texan girl who suffers from a condition called Brachymetatarsia. In short (pun intended): the 4th metatarsal on my right foot stopped growing in childhood which made my fourth toe (or "ring" toe as I've heard it called) appear to be a lot shorter than the rest.

Is brachymet painful? Sometimes. I love to run however after a couple of miles of running, the right half of my right foot goes uncomfortably numb probably due to uneven weight distribution. Also, I love shoes and almost all of them have material than run right across my lil toe and cause it to get rubbed raw :(

In addition to physical discomfort, this has stopped me from doing a ton of things. For example: Texas + Memorial Day= float the river. It's a blast but less so when everyone is wearing flip flops and you're wearing crocs or other hideous waterproof shoes. Same goes for waterparks, the beach, and swimming pools. Only my immediate family has seen my foot. Nobody else in my entire extended family has it.

Probably the most sadistic thing I ever did to myself was work at a shoe store surrounded by shoes I couldn't wear. Once at the store I saw a girl walk in with brachy on BOTH feet and she was rockin' those flip flops like nobody's business. If only we all had such confidence.


As I said, this is something I have been deeply embarrassed about my entire life and finally took the plunge and had the external fixator surgery 4 weeks ago today. I could've gone to Arizona to have Dr. Lee do the 1 step lengthening but I found an awesome doc close to home so I figured why not just keep it local ;).


Anyway I only have 1 clear-ish "before" pic of my foot due to I hated my foot and never took pics of it. So I'm posting it here so you can have an idea of what it looked like :)