vituperation

Did you see right there in my comments from the last entry?

Says Kathy:

I am the privileged recipient of a jar each of Fred’s strawberry and raspberry/habanero jams. Fred, they are awesome! Did you see the YouTube video I made of our jam tasting? It ends with my cat attacking my foot. My huzzbind can’t wait to try the hot sauce. I’m not a hot pepper liking person, but I could kill myself on that jam! So delish with a piece of hard cheese (we used gouda) on a cracker. We decided, when having some as a snack this afternoon, that you need to call it FRED’S DAMN GOOD JAM (Damned?).

The eggs (AIGS!) are awesome, also. Honestly I didn’t detect THAT much of a taste difference - kind of a more eggy egg taste. The biggest difference for me was the hardness of the shells - I really had to whack those suckers to break them cleanly! I ate two of the blue ones for lunch yesterday, scrambled in a touch of butter (from the Amish store in Etheridge, TN).

Um sorry didn’t mean to hijack your comments! THANKS for the yummy stuff!

You’re quite welcome, Kathy — you shoulda been here for the peach I made.

(yes, I’m attention-whoring my mad skillz with the habaneros)

Do you smoke? the sheet of paper said. If so, how many packs per day/week?

I sat in the waiting room, filling out the forty-five pages of bullshit every doctor makes you fill out when you’re a new patient. It’s that plantar fasciitis, you see. I couldn’t take it any more, because it transitioned from making me gimp around when I got out of bed or off the couch after sitting for a while to full-blown pain with every step. Not killer pain all the time, but enough to make me limp and try to walk with my heel off the ground, which just served to make other parts of my foot and leg hurt. Then, on top of the constant pain was the agony of using the foot after it had time to rest and tighten. Stretches helped with that, but not with the incessant ache.

After almost four years of hurting, here I sat, filling out forms.

Do you drink? If so how often?

I checked the ‘no’ box for that one, too.

Cultural concerns?

I considered this for a moment, then wrote “white; can’t dance” in the space provided.

The jangle of the bell over the door caught my attention. A middle-aged man of the good ole boy variety entered, a small boy in tow. They walked to the counter, where the man leaned into the window and gave his name.

“What are you here for?” the receptionist asked.

“My right foot.”

“Hmmm,” she said, checking his chart. “It’s got you down here as bilateral.”

He jerked and shot a glance at the boy. “Says I’m bi-what?” he asked in a gruff voice.

It took everything I had not to guffaw.

“It means both feet,” she said.

“Oh. Naw, it’s just my right one.”

I was called back by the doctor’s assistant and taken to an exam room, where I was told to take off my right shoe and sock and wait some more. Less than five minutes later the doctor — who looked to be about twelve — came in and introduced himself. He looked down at my bare foot.

“That’s my flat foot,” I said.

“I was just about to say that was one of the flatter ones I’ve seen.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s plantar fasciitis,” I said, and explained my symptoms. “We always laugh about how gimpy I am when I get up off the couch, because I can barely hobble due to the pain. It’s pretty bad.”

Dr. Howser took my foot in his hands and started the patented doctor poke, prod, and squeeze.

“Does this hurt? What about this? How about now?”

Then he found the magic spot, and sent me through the ceiling when he pressed it.

“Yeah, that hurt,” I said, when I was able.

“I’m not so sure this is plantar fasciitis. I think it’s a nerve impingement. Your tibial nerve comes down your leg here—” he traced a path with one finger down my calf “—and splits here by the ankle. Part of it, the plantar nerve, goes this way through a tunnel of muscles down to the bottom of your foot.”

I blinked.

“Because your foot is flat, it’s putting even more pressure on that area, and could definitely cause some plantar fasciitis-like symptoms. I think we could probably help it quite a bit with an orthotic to grab your heel and lift it up. Hold it in the right place so that nerve isn’t impinged any more.”

To demonstrate, he twisted my foot from its normal poke-out-to-the-side-like-a-duck-foot position into a normal straight position. I flinched, because holding my foot straight has always a little uncomfortable to me.

The doctor scowled a little in concentration.

“Did that hurt?” he asked.

“A little.”

“Let’s get some xrays of your foot. Your heel seems really rigid, and I want to see if they show me anything.”

An xray tech took me further into the bowels of the office and snapped three images of my gimpy foot, then took me back to the exam room. A few minutes later, Dr. Howser returned. He stuck an xray up into the, um, xray thingy, and snapped on the light.

“You have a calcaneonavicular coalition in your foot.”

I blinked.

“See this?” He pointed at a bright white bar of solid bone across my foot. “There should be lots of space in there.”

The confusion must’ve been apparent on my face, because he went out and got a normal xray for comparison. When he put it up on the thingy, the area that had been a big white bar on my xray was actually several smaller bones in this one. And, like he said, there were plenty of gaps in between.

“It’s a congenital birth defect,” he said. “The bones are fused together, which is why your heel is so rigid and it hurts to straighten it out. In a normal foot all those pieces will move together.”

As he spoke, a big light came on in my head. I thought about all the times I’ve jokingly referred to my right foot as my clubfoot; about how it always struck heel-first with a loud THUMP! coming down the stairs because it wouldn’t flex right, making me sound like a peg-legged pirate; about how I have no balance because of my weird-ass foot; about how there was talk when I was little about breaking bones in my foot so that it would be straight.

“Would that explain why this leg is so much smaller than the other one?” I asked, and straightened both legs for comparison.

“Wow, that is a lot smaller, isn’t it? This would definitely account for that. There’s no support, so your muscles couldn’t develop properly.”

“Can it be fixed?”

His face fell.

“Maybe. First, this means is that the orthotic we were going to try won’t work. It’s not going to do anything but cause you more pain because of the fused bones. If you were younger I’d recommend a [big scientific phrase here that means “de-fuse-ectomy”], but your foot has already developed with this in place, so I don’t think we want to go that route.

“Right now, your foot is slowly collapsing, and what we want to try and do is keep it from collapsing any more.

“I’m going to write you a prescription for a flexible orthotic to give your foot some support and stop the collapse. It might help with the pain, but then again it might not. With chronic pain like this, cortisone and physical therapy aren’t going to help. If the orthotic doesn’t do it, we’re probably going to have to look at something surgical.”

“Like, go in and cut the nerve or something?” I asked. I admit, it sounded kind of cool in a creepy way.

“No, a fasciectomy with impingement release, not a cut nerve. But before we even think about that, let’s try the orthotic.”

He wrote me a prescription for a flexible orthotic and sent me on my way. I called Robyn as soon as I was in the car.

“Turns out I really am a gimpy old crip,” I said when she answered. “I’m practically one of Jerry’s kids.”

(close your mail client, please)

I explained everything to her and listened to her pass all the information on to Nance, who was with her.

“Well, that sucks,” Robyn said. “Nance almost brought home a kitten from the shelter.”

Their collective sympathy for my plight was overwhelming.

“I’ll bet I could get a handicapped tag out of this!” I said. “That would make for some excellent parking.”

“You are NOT getting a handicapped tag!”

She never lets me have any fun.

I’ll leave you with the video below so this entry will both begin and end with something sweet.