Dr. Ebonie Vincent has her work cut out for her in the season finale of My Feet Are Killing Me as she looks to give one patient a whole new lease on life after a childhood injury left her with a “deformed” foot and more than 42 surgeries under her belt. In a PopCulture.com exclusive finale of the TLC series, a woman named Heather asks for Dr. Vincent’s help to finally wear high heels after a lifetime suffering with her foot.
Hit by a car when she was just four years old, Heather reveals her “leg got ground down” to the point where she has no ankle. “Basically, they fused two of the bones together,” she explains, showing off the massive scar on her back caused from the skin graft surgeons used to piece her foot back together.
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Spending six months in the hospital and then months more on and off from then on, Heather underwent at least 42 painful surgeries on her foot during her childhood.
“When I was hearing her story, she’s been dealing with this, this foot, since she was four years old,” Dr. Vincent reflects to the camera. “That’s a lifetime. So, you can’t help but to feel a little sorrow.”
Despite all she’s been through, Heather still struggles with pain and infection in her reconstructed foot.
“Sometimes I’ll be fine walking, and then all of a sudden I’ll have one step and this sharp pain will happen, and I can’t put any pressure on it. Like it’ll stop me in my tracks,” she explains. “That’s when there’s blood, or if I have a sore on my foot from the shoe, ’cause of the fact that it shapes.”
The infection is especially concerning for Dr. Vincent: “When infection sets into your body it can go into your bloodstream, and you can have what’s called sepsis, and that’s life threatening,” she explains. “If we keep it as is, there’s only be more and more chance for her to continue to have wounds that will cause more infection.”
Heather’s ultimate reach goal would be to wear high heels, which Dr. Vincent has to break the news to her a stiletto is looking out of reach with everything going on in her body. Despite that disappointment, “cute shoes is within reach,” the podiatrist reassures her.
“Heather’s foot is shocking,” Dr. Vincent says, finally taking a look at the foot in question. “Everything was pieced together, and pretty deformed. I can tell it’s gonna be a battle every step of the way to fix it.”
Can Heather get a new lease on life and an adorable new pair of shoes?
My Feet Are Killing Me airs Thursday at 10 p.m. ET on TLC.
Photo credit: TLC
