GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #644: FOOT PAIN

 So here's something horrible that happened to me yesterday morning. I woke up two hours earlier than my alarm was supposed to go off. I wasn't sure why. Then, suddenly, my bad foot flared up with pain. I'm not talking about the usual neuropathy that comes with being diabetic. That feels like a needle getting stuck in your foot for one second, two max, and then it goes away for weeks. It sucks, but it's fast.

No, this felt like someone had put a railroad spike into the heel of my foot and kept it there. Then it went away. I felt relief and tried to go back to sleep only to feel it again a couple of minutes later. And that cycle continued for the next half-hour.

My bad foot is fat. Even if you knew nothing about me, you would know there was something wrong with it. I tried looking at it, trying to see if it looked any different, but it was hard to say. I thought maybe putting pressure on it would help, so I stood up for a while and still felt the intermittent pain.

This was it. I was hoping that this day would be somewhere far into the future. Perhaps it would be scheduled for sometime after my impeding fatal heart attack, which was what I was really hoping for. But it seemed like this was the day that I would go to the ER, and the doctors would tell me they would have to amputate.

I sat there on the edge of my bed thinking about calling into work and then going to the ER. A part of me thought maybe I was mistaken. Or perhaps I could keep on keeping on and ignore the pain. Or better yet, I could start drinking again and banish the pain that way. Booze usually did the trick. If I ignored it, maybe the bad news would never find me.

Finally I came to a compromise. I would go about my day and see if the pain kept flaring up. If it interfered with my ability to work, I would tell my supervisors and then go to the ER.

When I went downstairs I felt something crackling in my foot. I hoped it was the usual shit and not something new and worse. I felt pain. Then I made breakfast, and I still felt the pain. I brushed my teeth. I took my first shit of the day. And by the time I got out to my car I realized I hadn't felt the pain for a bit. I waited for it to come back, and it didn't. I drove to work and made it through the rest of my day without the pain.

Maybe it was just a new version of diabetic neuropathy? I don't know. I'm just glad it stopped happening. I still haven't felt it as of this moment, and I hope it stays that way.

Because this pain fucking sucked.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #637: TOE UPDATE

As you may recall I'm down to eight toes, and one of them recently was at risk of leaving me, too. I'd worn a hole in that toe, and it didn't want to heal. Sometimes it would build up a callus around it, but the hole was still there under that dead skin as my podiatrist would tell me every time he sanded it down. This is the exact same thing that happened to the second toe I lost, so you can understand my apprehension.

He eventually did a little minor surgery on the toe. He said he was "popping the tendon," which sounds horrifying and brutal, but it really wasn't. Because the toe was curled up, the callus kept building up, preventing the hole from healing. The surgery straightened the toe out. I can't really move it now, but at least it's no longer a problem.

Because the plug finally came off the hole. A bunch of dead skin came off the other night, showing that the hole was finally closed up. Not only that, but my toenail has started growing back. That is an excellent sign, so good that I'm not going to lose the toe. It's actually looking pretty good right now.

So who knows? Maybe when they put me in the ground I'll have all eight of my toes. Probably not. I'll bet that they take off my left foot before I shuffle off the mortal whatsis. Hopefully not, but with my luck?

Yeah.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #402: MY DESCENT INTO DECREPITUDE CONTINUES

So I got even more bad news yesterday with a tiny sprinkling of good news. Because that's what happens every time I see a doctor. Any doctor.

But this wasn't just any doctor. He was the last person to see the big toe on my right foot attached to the rest of me. Because he was holding the scalpel that would remove said big toe. So I knew the news would be bad.

My bad foot is collapsing. The more it collapses, the closer it comes to being amputated, and they would be cutting just below my left knee. He looked at the bottom of my foot with a great deal of concern, and I started wondering if I'd be able to leave his office with both feet still attached. That would suck, especially since the hole in that foot healed so nicely.

"I'm going to look at the x-rays," he said. When he came back, he had that sprinkle of good news. "It's not too bad. Yet. If your foot gets hot and turns red, go to the ER."

Well. Okay then.

Then he wanted to admire his work on my right foot. "I don't know who performed that amputation, but he did a great job," he said.

I tried to smile. Not that it would have showed under my mask, anyway.

But he was very concerned with the toe next to my stump. I'd been having problems with it, but for a while it was covered on the tip by a shell of dead skin. It seemed to have healed, and it was giving me no problems.

"That's bad," he said. "Let me trim that up for you."

It's a good thing I have very little feeling in my toes because he took a scalpel and some surgical scissors to that toe, carving away the dead skin. "Ah. There's an open sore here. It's small, but it's not too bad. If you hadn't come in, it might have gotten to the bone. Then you'd have eight toes."

Fucking great.

"Oop. You're bleeding a little bit." He used gauze to wipe it up, and then he bandaged it up and advised me to keep an eye on it. Keep changing the bandage. Use the leftover antibiotic ointment from the incident with the hole in my foot.

"And hey. Bleeding is good news. If it bleeds, it can heal."

I'm pretty sure that's not the lesson I learned from Predator.

Then he lowered me down from the elevated chair, and I saw that I'd bled so much there was a puddle on the floor that a nurse had to sanitize. It reminded me of when a surgeon had to "open you up a little" when I had an abscess. When I looked at that guy's work, he'd unzipped the inside of my thigh. I could have fit all of my fingers in the slit he made there.

So I've been watching that toe. Every time I finally get it to stop bleeding, a couple of hours later I discover it's started bleeding again. But hey. If it bleeds, we can kill it. No, wait. I got that wrong.

Anyway, I'm sure if I live long enough (and that's never a guarantee), I'll be Johnny Eight Toes. Or hell. Maybe I'll get the other foot cut off and I'll be Johnny Three Toes. It has a certain ring to it, but I don't think I'd like going through life like that.

FUCK.