My foot

I have this foot that will probably be the death of me.  In my teens I was a cheerleader.  Okay, so I have a big mouth and don’t mind wiggling my butt in front of people!  Our uniforms consisted of the unholiest smelling wool sweaters, wool slacks (thank God they were lined) and saddle shoes and wool socks.  The saddle shoes wore the back of my heels to blisters which eventually turned into callouses.  The callouses turned into hot, red inflamed hard skin.  The one on MY FOOT, which is the left one hurt so badly that I sometimes cried?

It was during these formative years that I began to develop bunions.  Bunion ache, if you don’t know it, is a burning sensation.  I have put my feet in iced water many times to try to curb that pain.  After many years of suffering I discovered that my bunions didn’t hurt any more.  My feet just looked like something from Michael Jackson’s Thriller video.

If bothered by my ugly ass feet, I would always think to myself, “at least they work.”

My husband and I were wrestling in our early years of marriage and I dislocated my big toe on my left foot.  That was quite uncomfortable for some time.

Through the years I banged my foot, broke little toes, and stepped on glass and every damage you can imagine and then some.  I wore heels for a few years but avowed to give them up when I chose to stay home and be a stay at home mother to my two girls.

The year that I took my job as school secretary I was having some strange problem with my left foot.  I couldn’t walk or stand for even ten minutes at a time.  My stupid foot would go numb and I’d have to sit down.  If you know me, you know I am hyperactive.  I can’t sit down!

I had a neuroma.  Not a Morton’s neuroma but between my big toe and the one next to it.  (Does that toe have a name?)  I had to have foot surgery and I was warned that these things do come back.  Oh goody!

The year before I retired from being a school secretary I decided to have my bunion removed from my left foot.  I would recover at my Christmas vacation.  Well as fate would have it the bunion surgery recovery was much worse than I had imagined.  I had had the big toe bunion removed and pinned, the neuroma tied off again, and spurs scrapped from between my toes.  My little toe was also bunion free and pinned.

 I was off during January also and worked part time during February.  When I went back to work full time in March I had to take my lunch break lying on a floor mat with my legs up a wall.  This was to help with the swelling.

I went into compression socks and it hurt so bad just getting the boa constrictor socks on but it did relieve the swelling.  I was in those things until summer when I swore I would not wear black knee socks every day in my swim suit.

Three years later and I now think the stupid neuroma is back with a vengeance.  If I sleep on my left side my left foot goes to sleep as well.  If I sleep on my right side, my shoulder hurts.  If I sleep on my back I snore to high heaven.  Sleeping on my stomach is out because my large American breasts are uncomfortable.  So I toss around all night long, shoulder hurting, foot asleep and snoring.

Oh, well, at least they get me around.

Photo is from my trip to Arizona where younger daughter and I had pedicures and the lady did my toes in a Bengal motif.