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My husband cried in the car after my grandson's birthday party. He thought I didn't see but I saw. Gerald is not a man who cries. Thirty four years and I can count the times on one hand, when his father passed, when our youngest was born six weeks early, and the day he retired. So when I glanced over at a red light and saw him quietly wiping his eyes, I just left it and kept driving. When we got home he went straight to the recliner, took his shoes off and like usual his feet were swollen and puffy. Gerald's feet have been bothering him for 15 years but that day was the first time I really understood what it had been costing him. He'd spent three hours at that party in a garden chair watching everyone else. Our grandson turned three and there were bubbles and a paddling pool and a little slide set up on the lawn, and Gerald sat in that chair the whole time because he knew his feet would pay the price the next day. He'd been managing this for years and we’d plan every outing around how long he'd be standing, leaving events early, parking as close as possible. His doctor had checked his circulation, ruled out anything serious and told him this was the kind of thing that came with age and the years he'd spent on his feet working. They recommended compression socks and Gerald tried three different kinds, but they were too tight, left marks on his legs and did nothing for the actual soreness in his feet or afternoon swelling. I found Onecompress bamboo foot sleeves through a Facebook group for people dealing with chronic inflammation and a few people mentioned them specifically for morning soreness, said they were actually wearing them overnight and their feet had been recovering and feeling better. That was the part that caught my attention because Gerald's feet never seemed to get any better, and it was always nighttime we’d struggle with. I ordered two pairs and left them on his nightstand without making a thing of it. He looked at them, looked at me and put them on. The first morning he came into the kitchen and I watched him walk in without his usual flat footed shuffle he does first thing in the morning. He poured his coffee and stood at the counter and smiled at me, which he hadn't done first thing in the morning in a long time. We didn't say anything about it but I noticed. By the third week the end of day swelling was noticeably less and he stopped going straight to the recliner when we got home. He started suggesting small things, a walk to the end of the street, standing at the grill on a Saturday, nothing dramatic but it was a big shift in him. Last weekend my grandson came over and Gerald got down on the floor with him and stayed there for forty minutes doing a puzzle, then got back up without me offering a hand. I went back to the kitchen and got a little bit emotional. His feet aren’t fixed and I'm not going to pretend his feet are what they were twenty years ago, but he's so much better. I think that birthday party in the garden chair was the last one he'll be sitting out. The sleeves are called Onecompress bamboo foot sleeves and I ordered them through their website because they're not in stores. The price was reasonable and they're genuinely softer than anything else we'd tried. www.onecompress.com/collections/best-sellers/products/bamboofootsleeves I'm not affiliated with them at all, but I keep thinking about how many other people are struggling that might not have to be.