If you do not look for and treat all the trigger points in the muscles that refer pain to the arch of the foot, then you and your doctor will not know if you have actual inflammation of the plantar surface or if you have trigger points referring to the plantar surface.

When you treat the trigger points that refer pain to the arch, you can eliminate the pain that seems to be plantar fasciitis in 1 to 2 months, not 6 to 18 months. The worst thing that a medical practitioner can do is put someone with actual plantar fasciitis or trigger points referring to the arch in a soft cast.  Casting or immobilizing the foot or limiting the foot movement slows the recovery by a year or more. A soft cast immobilizes less than a hard cast.  Both immobilize the foot and can cause the plantar fascia to shorten and the muscles that refer pain to the arch to shorten, and when you use the foot after taking the cast off, the pain can be worse than excruciating and can actually cause plantar fasciitis to increase and the inflammation to increase, thus activating the trigger points.   The idea that surgery would help is absolutely the wrong thinking.  Surgery is unnecessary and is contraindicated for people with fibromyalgia and will heighten the central sensitivity.  Most of the people diagnosed with plantar fasciitis are misdiagnosed.  Many physicians name the location of the pain and not the source of the pain.  If you name a pain by the source of the pain rather than the location of the pain, you are more likely to eliminate the pain and dysfunction.  Most pain experienced on the plantar surface of the foot is actually from trigger points in the following muscles.  1. the medial gastrocnemius muscle has a trigger point located just below the back of the knee that refers pain to the entire arch of the foot.  2.  the abductor hallucis and flexor hallucis, a big toe muscle in the arch area of the foot causes pain in the arch and ball of the foot.  3. the medial part of the soleus refers to the  inside of the heel and the arch.  4.  the quadratus plantae is in the arch and can cause arch pain and heel pain and can pull on the bone and cause a bone spur. 5. the active trigger points in the tibialis muscle located in the deep back of the calf causes excruciating pain in the plantar surface especially after sleeping.  While sleeping, the muscles shorten, and when a person gets out of bed and step on their feet, it feels as if they are walking on sharp knives.  6. The flexor digitalis longus is a muscle that is also deep in the back of the calf that causes a very painful arch when bearing weight.