FrankenFoot Follies

Pain has a way of twisting your every thought in its direction.  It sucks the freedom and life from your brain and lungs.  Living moment to moment on narcotics, snapping out of the haze long enough to figure out if it has been 6 hours so you can swallow down some more pills, is the only way to survive the intense and constant blowtorch heat, set on high, and aimed at the inside and outside of the foot.  The swelling hurts as the skin almost bursts.

Five weeks have passed since going under the knife to correct my feet.   All this improving would be encouraging if the results still didn’t look like a red, mismatched angry club.  “Whose toes are those?”  Yucka-munga.

My first post-op visit was a few weeks ago.  The soft spoken surgeon came into the room and made the mistake of asking me (a south-side girl from Chicago) how it was going.  “Well, Doc.  This thing is a real Bastard.”   A little daunted, he replied, “Well, I’m glad I didn’t call you the first week you were home.”   My reply?  “Damn straight.  I might have called you a Bastard, too.”  We both laughed (as I sat there wanting to stab his eyes out with a steak knife.)

Bunion surgery is not for sissies.   Wait too long, and you get the added pleasure of having so much damage done to your foot that they have to break a couple of toes, shorten them, and plate the base of your foot.  Five screws, a rod, a plate and seven more weeks of crutches until I get to have the other foot “repaired”.

The thing I hate most is talking about it…like old people coffee-klatching at McDonald’s at 6 a.m. with nothing better to do than discuss their bowel movements, joint pain, and hemorrhoid medications.  Forgive me, my brain has been hijacked.