Last week was not my best week ever. It started with an epic Monday involving a cab ride the wrong way down a one-way portion of Lower Wacker, followed by roughly a half-gallon of hopefully-water pouring down on me as I stepped onto an elevator. I did survive both the harrowing cab ride and the mysteriously wet elevator ride. It speaks to my tolerance for the strange that I chose to ride the rainy elevator to the 27th floor without considering the fact that maybe I should take a different elevator.
So it was with a “how much worse can it get?” attitude that I walked myself to the podiatrist on Friday afternoon to talk about my sore heels and get some shoe inserts or something. The doctor poked my feet, watched me squirm, frowned at the amount of swelling and the News-To-Me difference in the length of my legs, and took a set of x-rays. She put the x-rays up on the little light box on the wall, and I was all “Hey! Feet! Cool! Also, what are those spikes on the bottom? And why are the backs of my heels all jagged like that?”
Doc took a deep breath, turned around to face me, and said Very Seriously, “You need aggressive treatment.”
Holy shit!
So, I do have plantar fasciitis, and heel spurs, and wear/mild fracturing at the back of my heels…in both feet. This is what happens when you combine a high tolerance for pain, a tendency toward hypochondria, and a Fear of Bothering People for No Good Reason. At the first twinge of pain I immediately diagnose myself with something life threatening, then spend the next several weeks/months teetering between my desire to run to the doctor omg-I’m-going-to-die and my desire to not waste their time because I am (usually) wrong about the severity of whatever issue. In this case my ability to put up with the pain seems to have let me wait-it-out a little too long.
Because the left one is worse-off, that is in a cast and boot now, and my right is in a beefed-up tennis shoe. I have two to three weeks in a cast/boot, two to three weeks in a boot without the inner cast, and then physical therapy. Then we see how the right foot has been getting along and possibly do it all over again.
In 2009 I have spent three weeks full-time at Rush Hospital, plus outpatient treatment for eight more, I had an eyelid infection that involved wearing an eye patch for a week, and now I have a cast/boot combo. Clearly this is the Year Of The Medical Expenses. I can’t wait until October 26th to see how expensive my first dentist appointment in eight years will be!
