Guides for the moments a web page is not enough

A page explains something while you are sitting comfortably. A guide is what you want in a waiting room, on the morning of an appointment, or the week before a medical review — structure you can carry rather than prose you have to remember.

What are you preparing for?

Pick anything that applies. The list reorders to whichever guide is actually built for your situation.

Your situation

Clubfoot Parent Appointment Checklist

Free. What to ask at each stage of casting and bracing, what to write down, and which answers are worth chasing if you do not get them. Built to be opened on a phone while someone is talking to you.

The single most useful thing for a parent in the first year, because the appointments come fast and the questions only occur to you afterwards.

Free

Considering Military Service With Clubfoot or Altered Mechanics

Free. An honest orientation before you invest years in the idea: how a history like yours tends to be read, what the process actually involves, and the questions worth answering for yourself first.

Written to be useful whichever way you decide, including if the honest answer turns out to be no.

Free

Military Preparation Handbook

Paid. The long version: documentation, how waivers are approached, physical preparation with altered mechanics, load carriage, footwear, and what to expect from a medical review that stops to think about your file.

For people who have already decided to try and want the detailed version rather than the orientation.

Go deeper

Adult load and appointment pack

Paid. For adults managing long shifts, physical work or a body that is starting to cost more: how to record what changed, how to describe it in ten minutes, and how to structure the load across a week rather than a day.

Most adults arrive at an appointment with a feeling rather than a record. This turns the feeling into something a clinician can work with.

Go deeper

Four guides, in rough order of how many people need them. Tell it your situation and the list re-ranks.

Free and paid, and why the line falls where it does

The free guides are complete. They are not samples, and nothing has been held back from them to make the paid ones look necessary — if a parent only ever downloads the checklist, that is a good outcome.

The paid guides cover narrower ground for people who have already decided to do something specific and want the detailed version. They exist because paid guides are one of the four things funding this site — alongside reader support, affiliate commissions and the app — and that mix is precisely what lets it refuse money from brace makers, footwear brands and clinics.

Paying for a guide is what makes turning down the other money possible.

Where to buy the paid guides → The disclosure rules in full →

The guides

What is in a guide that is not on the site?

Structure you can carry. The web pages explain things; the guides are checklists, question sheets and preparation material designed to be printed or opened on a phone in a waiting room.

Are the free guides cut down?

No. The free guides are complete and useful on their own. The paid ones cover different, narrower ground rather than unlocking anything withheld from the free versions.

Why charge for anything?

Because guides are part of what funds the site, alongside reader support, affiliate commissions and the app. That mix is what keeps it free of brace, footwear and clinic money, and paying for a guide is part of what makes refusing that money possible.

What format are they?

PDF, designed to work printed and on a phone. No app, no login, no subscription, and nothing that expires or needs an account to open later.

Will a guide tell me what to do about my foot?

No. Like the rest of the site they help you prepare, ask better questions and keep a record, and they will not diagnose anything or advise on your treatment.

Do they get updated?

Yes, and updates are free once you have bought one. Where something material changes, the guide is revised and the version date on the front page is updated.

Elsewhere

The shop →Where the paid guides are bought. Before an appointment →The free web version of what to take with you. Support instead →If you would rather chip in than buy a guide.