The first thing you see when you walk into Dr. Alan Woo-dle's office in Greenwood is a pink-satin toe shoe on the reception counter containing his business cards.
Woodle is a podiatrist who specializes in treating dancers' feet. Not all of his patients are dancers, but "it's my No. 1 favorite thing," he said.
SETTING THE STAGE
As his baby footprints attest, Woo-dle was born with foot deformities: hammer toes and Metatarsus adductus, a C-shaped foot (his left). Growing up, he saw many foot doctors, but he never dreamed of becoming one himself, or of serving Terpsichore, the muse of dance.
The first decade of his life, Woodle's family moved up and down the West Coast because of his father's job as a civil engineer. They settled in Seattle in 1963. Woodle later attended Roosevelt High School and graduated in 1971.
He went on to the University of Washington, majoring in cellular molecular biology. He was headed to graduate school for medical history when someone pointed out the impracticality of the field; the person suggested he go into podiatry instead. "Everyone has feet," the person said.
Woodle took this advice. He returned to UW and earned another bachelor's degree, this time in neurophysiology, and then went on to medical school at the California College of Podiatric Medicine in San Francisco.
While there, he attended the San Francisco Ballet, his first exposure to dance, and began to treat a few members of the company.
"Dancers can be difficult patients," he said. "They don't want to do what you say. They don't want to rest to let injuries heal, then complain when they don't.
"Now I'm used to it," he added affectionately.
He returned to Seattle and opened a practice in Northgate with a partner in 1981.
He married Roslyn Knodel, and the couple now has three children.
He has practiced on his own in Greenwood for the last 14 years.
DANCING FEET
A few dancers with Pacific Northwest Ballet (PNB) were among his early patients. Some had common foot problems, but others asked him questions referring to dance movements in French, as is done in ballet, he said.
He began to sit in on dance classes to learn the vocabulary and became a familiar face in the dance studio. He eventually was asked to lecture dancers on the prevention of foot and ankle injuries.
Soon, he was addressing specific problems, including fractures, sprains, tendonitis (the worst being a ripped Achilles tendon), and bunions and corns from cramming feet into toe shoes.
Toe shoes are thin and tight, which is necessary for flexibility, but hard on the foot, Woodle said.
Exacerbating wear-and-tear on ballet dancers' feet is the fact that right and left toe shoes are identical, unlike our right and left feet, or any other kind of pair of shoes, he explained.
Woodle also treats Irish step and modern dancers. Irish step dancers frequently pound their feet and snap their heels of their ghillies (shoes). Sometimes they miss and kick themselves in the heel.
Modern dancers dance in bare feet. They develop thick calluses on their feet, but sometimes the calluses crack and become infected. Also, the pea-shaped Sesamoid bones of the big toe can rub against other toes, causing pain.
Most dancers have high pain thresholds: "They put up with more pain than the rest of us," Woodle said. "Pain is normal to them."
Because their feet are under constant and unusual stress, "many dancers have particularly ugly feet," he said, adding that some dancers have chronic foot problems after they retire.
AN EXPERT IN THE FIELD
Woodle has developed a niche. Very few podiatrists specialize in treating dancers, he said, and he gets calls from colleagues nationwide asking for his opinions.
In 2002, he gave the keynote address at the American Podiatric Medical Association convention, and he is on the advisory board of Pointe Magazine. Every four years he volunteers at the International Ballet Competition in Jackson, Miss.
Locally, besides treating dancers from PNB and Edmonds' Olympic Ballet, he volunteers for Russia's Bolshoi Ballet when it comes to town.
He related how, once, a Bolshoi soloist broke the shank of her toe shoe rehearsing right before a performance, straining the top of her foot. Ignoring a cacophony of "nyets," Woodle applied an Elastoplast bandage adhesive-side-up, enabling her to perform pain-free.
Unfortunately, there's no quick-fix for most last-minute emergencies. "I've had many weeping dancers in my office," Woodle said.
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