Saturday night, I woke up, my right foot’s toes inflamed and burning. My girlfriend woke up too, she said “good lord, you’re feverish.” After a couple of hours of shaking fevered delusions I let her convince me to go to the hospital.
I’ve always suffered from chronic foot pain because I was born with the bones of my second and third toes fused on both feet. It’s not supposed to be a big deal to separate them shortly after birth. But in Argentina it’s considered a cosmetic operation. My drunken dad believed that (get this) “God wanted me that way,” so he and my mom elected not to have the operation done. Nevermind that my grandmother lived seventy-eight years hobbled by her joined toes. She was in bad shape, hobbling with her old maple walking stick. I don’t remember her much, but it’s a horrible fate to contemplate.
Anyway, so I hadn’t had any X-ray’s taken of my feet since I was a kid. I can run fine and stuff. I won a city of Pasadena tennis tournament a few weeks ago. So other than the uncomfortable silence I get when explaining it to people, it hasn’t been as much of a problem for me.
So, it turned out that in my right foot, the fused bones were joined by only a thin strip of bone. Which broke sometime last week. I thought I had pulled a muscle having sex or something. (Hehe, I wish!) This jagged piece of bone, instead of setting properly, had been tearing into the muscle of my large double-toe until the damage from the sharp fragments was enough to cause me some serious pain.
Two hours later I had one almost normal second toe, and a very small third one wrapped up in gauze like a little mummy. Supposedly my balance is going to be off for a while, I can’t even play tennis for four months. Today I’m on crutches with a stupid stub of a toe, I’m a little fuzzy from painkillers, and driving hurts. Just felt like sharing. Life sucks sometimes, huh?