February 19, 2006

De Feet

I hurt my damn foot somehow. It must have been sometime on Friday, but I'm really not sure exactly when or how it happened. I started to notice some discomfort walking on Friday night, but because I routinely punish my feet by wearing converse day after day (actually this happens with other shoes as well) I usually assume that I can self correct the problem by switching footwear and getting on with my life. But instead of taking it easy and maybe resting up a bit, I was running around all weekend and managed to aggravate it further in the process. When I woke up this morning I noticed a big red mark on the side of my right foot. Not exactly a bruise- I'm at a bit of a loss to explain what it looks like. Like a sunburn kinda. Weird.

So I made the mistake of mentioning it to my mum when I talked to her this morning and not 10 minutes after getting off of the phone with her I got a call from my father in California.

"Your mother says you have a red streak going up you leg. I think you should call a doctor and go to the emergency room"

Grrr.

"That's not really what it looks like. It doesn't run up my leg, it runs across my foot - starting at the ankle and going towards, like, my toes. I'm pretty sure I got it from punishing my feet with the same pair of shoes all week. You know, like a sprain or something."

"Well, I think you should check it out and find out exactly what it is."

We drew a compromise where I would call my friend Glenn who is a doctor out in PA, describe it to him, and see what he thought.

After explaining the whole thing, once again, Glenn agreed with what I thought it was and recommended that I just stay off of it for today, take a few Advil every few hours and generally loaf around my apartment. That's fine with me because that's pretty much what I had planned to do anyway.

The bruise, or whatever it is, didn't really show up very well in the photo, but I prepared this dramatization to illustrate what it feels like: