Oddly, I was having a weird heel pain in my left foot recently, like for months, and then used a pumice stone on my heel and the pain went away almost immediately. Not sure if I had some small, weird foreign object trapped under the skin that got released, or if the extra dead skin was creating some strange imbalance that was the cause of the pain. But if anyone experiences the same unknown heel pain, the pumice stone is cheap and worth a shot. I got instant relief.
As an update, the pain in my heel came back.
I noticed there was a white-headed bump just under the skin at the location of pain. I remembered stepping on a broken basket about a year ago where the wire inside the basket frame impacted that spot. I didn't think anything had pierced the skin or broken of inside the actual heel, but it sure felt like that. It felt like there was something in my heel, tender to touch. I could scrape my nail over the spot and it certainly seemed like a sliver of something was in there.
So, after showering yesterday, I got busy with the pumice stone, desperate to break through the outer layer of skin and pick out whatever was in there. I did finally break through, so that the white head was sticking out, and I was able to pull out this white, boney shard from the spot.
I googled it and it appears to be a calcium deposit that had grown in the spot due to the trauma of stepping on the basket. So nothing was actually stuck in there; calcium had just built up in the pocket that experienced trauma. I guess this happens often in babies that get pricked in the heel for medical purposes.
Was weird pulling out the calcium shard, but definitely satsfying once it was out. Hopefully that is the end of it. Wouldn't have been so easy without my pumice stone.