Dan Soriano
Dan Soriano's feet give him fits. They have for a long time now. But Dan Soriano is not one for sitting around. "I'm a go-getter," he says. "I like to get up in the morning and go-go-go."
"But I had like a corn that grew inward on the bottom of my right foot, and it hurt. Some people call it an ulcer, but I call it a corn. This had been going on for years. I went to my primary care doctor and he was shaving it down once a month. Then he told me I could shave it down myself. So for a while my wife and I did that.
"Then it got infected."
And that meant Dan Soriano needed specialty care. He needed the physicians at Yakima Podiatry.
"Dr. (Silas) Klaver is one awesome doctor," Dan reports. "He's honest, and he explains it so you can understand it. He even took my foot and drew on it with a Sharpie to show me what he was going to do.
"What he did was, I went to Yakima Valley Memorial hospital and on Nov. 14, 2018, Dr. Klaver went in and dug out all that stuff from both the bottom and top of my foot. The hole was about the size of a 50-cent piece! He was really happy with the way the surgery went. After that I was on home care from November until February."
But Dan and Dr. Klaver weren't finished yet. There was more work to be done. Dan had developed a callous on the bottom of his foot, near the recent surgical wound, so Dr. Klaver fitted him with orthotics to correct his stance.
"I've got what they call hammer toes, and my foot doesn't face forward when I walk. It faces a little bit right," says Dan. "That's where Dr. Klaver thinks the callouses were coming from. Dr. Klaver shaved that callous down for a couple of months, but he was disappointed because the orthotics weren't working like they should.
"Dr. Klaver is not a surgery-type doctor. He wanted to try other things first. He told me we could keep going with the shaving or, he said he could go in and clip and pin the fourth metatarsal bone, which is next to the baby toe. So he did that (on Sept. 18, 2019) with out-patient surgery at Yakima Valley Memorial.
"I saw him just today, and he took the stitches out. I have no pain down there. He also took the first knuckle off the toe next to my big toe: Because of the hammertoe I was walking on the nail and I was developing a blister."
"Dr. Klaver said I could put pressure on it, but nothing stupid. So I was out in the yard with my wife just this morning. She was cutting stuff down and I was helping her. Everything's going well. I feel good. I haven't had any pain. "Dr. Klaver is an awesome, awesome guy. He explains things so that a person who doesn't know about medical things can understand."