Woman's Doctor: Dealing with bunions

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Many women love their shoes. It’s a way for them to show off their style. But if they develop a bunion, it can not only limit your shoe choice, but become really, really painful.

Surgery may be an option to get you back in your favorite shoes comfortably.

That big bump on the outer side of your large toe may be a bunion.

"I have patients that come in with crazy large bunions and they’re asking if they need to have them taken care of because they have no pain, and then I have other patients who have smaller bunion deformities, and they legitimately affect their ability to wear normal shoes and exercise," Dr. Rebecca Cerrato said.

If the deformity becomes painful, Cerrato, at Mercy Medical Center, said it may be time to consider a few options.

"Oftentimes, just simply changing the style shoe you have, even the width size, there are bunion sleeves or pads that some people can wear and are really successful in getting relief of the pain that they had," Cerrato said.

If those changes don’t work, it may be time to consider surgery. Cerrato said bunions are more common in women, and bunion surgery is usually an outpatient procedure with a recovery time of about six to eight weeks.