Ode to my right foot

Earlier this year, I had a foot injury, and upon relating the story to someone, I suddenly realised that my right foot has quite a history of injury. So I decided to one day write a post about it. If this seems at all silly to you, I heartily agree. But perhaps you'll understand once you hear my tale.

 

I have never broken a bone in my life--at least that I can prove. The two times I've had X-rays of my right foot, there were no fractures. It's the times I haven't had X-rays that I suspect my foot was actually broken. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

 

We lived at Fay Avenue when was in second and third grade, and we had a chair that my brother had salvaged from a dumpster behind our student housing complex at UCLA. (Yes, even then, my family were dumpster divers!) This blue chair was a swiveler, and I used to love to sit in it and...well...swivel. One day, alas! My right foot got stuck under the chair while someone else was in the chair (swiveling), and my foot got injured. It was just a flesh wound, but I can still point out the ibuprofen-sized circular scar on the top of the foot. Battle scars. And so it began.

 

I've always detested athletics, so I didn't have any injuries during my school days. Okay, I did have a possible stress fracture in my big toe once, but that hardly counts. No, my next injury came at the beginning of my sophomore year of college. And I can feel the excruciating pain even thinking about it. We'd been allowed to store two 70-lb boxes in the college storage facilities during that summer, and I had to move my two boxes from my freshman dorm to my sophomore dorm. It was a fair walk, but my friends and I managed, with my two boxes loaded onto a dolly. My new dorm, however, had no ramp access up the front steps and no elevator, so we stopped outside the building to contemplate the dilemma. As one of my dear friends let go of the dolly handle to stand it upright, the cart rolled on top of my right foot. I was in immediate agony. Not only did the goose-egg on the top of my foot swell up until it was literally the size of a chicken egg, but I had to ask my friend to go in my stead on a downtown-Chicago excursion with a group of freshmen that evening. After icing my foot for awhile and getting crutches from the health centre, I followed another friend to her cousin's apartment several blocks away to have dinner there. We walked, I hobbling on my crutches. I decided then that I would rather walk in anguish than use crutches for several weeks. So even though the health centre had encouraged me to go into a hospital for X-rays, I ignored them. (And Heather's cousin was sweet and gave us a ride back to campus that evening.) Woe is me! I should have listened to the health centre. I just knew I'd be humiliated if I went in for X-rays, and they said, "Ha, it's barely hurt. You're such a baby." It was at least two months before I could wear closed shoes again--just in time for winter. But my foot was tender to the touch for over a year afterward.

 

My next incident was the day after I graduated from college. My dear sister had come to the dorm to help me collect my absurdly numerous belongings, and we'd decided to pick through the dumpster before the trash truck came. (Lucky for us, the person driving the trash truck that day was an MK friend of ours from Nigeria.) I'd just found a futon for my sister and thrown it down to her. I jumped down after it and landed on the curb edge, twisting my right ankle beneath me. Ugh. My sister helped me hobble back upstairs to my dorm room, where I sat on a chair and watched my roommate continue to pack feverishly. A friend of mine stopped by, and I discovered to my delight that he had basic emergency medicine training. Yay! He wrapped my foot in an ACE bandage, told me to take an anti-inflammatory of any sort, and half-carried me downstairs to my sister's van. What a guy! Later that day, my sister took me to urgent care, and the X-rays showed no broken bones. But they did charge me an arm and a leg for the time spent and an air-cast, and they rented me a pair of crutches. This time I really did use them. The trouble was that you're not allowed to drive if you have crutches in your car for your use. So I lay on my sister's couch for a week, reading books, watching movies, talking with her, and enjoying being pampered. I was crushed to miss the dancing at a folk dance/sing the week after graduation--the last big folk bash I attended. By the time my friend Amanda got married four weeks later, I could hobble around in my strappy white sandals. No one even knew about my ankle. But that was a bad idea. I wrenched it again during the wedding, and I was back to wearing the air-cast for another few weeks.

 

My next incident was almost two years later. I was helping people at my church in San Diego set up for a special Renaissance party when the boys carrying a table behind me dropped it. The table landed against the back of my right foot. Everyone immediately took care of me, but I was in a lot of pain, and I sat out for most of the party that night. My host family made an appointment for me to see their orthopedic surgeon, and she took X-rays, but proclaimed that she thought I had only torn my tendon. Only. That's all! So I was back in an air-cast and got to wear flip-flops to work for my last few weeks of employment before I left for Nigeria for two months. Oh, and I highly recommend not injuring your foot right before a long journey. It's just a bad idea.

 

Well, it was almost two years after that that I hurt my foot this spring. Oh, well, the first thing I did was mis-step off the stairs at church and sprain my right ankle--the day of my little brother's 9th birthday party. Poor Mom had to cope mostly by herself with six little boys all yelling and screaming about one thing or another. But that healed well, and then, when I was carrying something in my house in late March, I knocked over a chair onto my right foot. Now, I know that doesn't sound like it would do much damage, but it hurt like you wouldn't believe. I couldn't touch the top of my foot--not even to wash it--for over a week. Even when I got into bed at night, I couldn't bear to put the sheet over my foot. Again, I had to wear flip-flops for literally months. The first time I put on sneakers after that was the end of May--two months later--to see if I could wear them while we were traveling in the States. By then, the pain had reduced enough so that it just kind of throbbed instead of panging.

 

So there it is, the story of my right foot. It's been through a lot in its day. And I'm sure it won't end here. But maybe now the curse will lift, and I won't have any more nightmares of hobbling around on crutches.

 

Thus ends the ode to my right foot.