The other day the joint where my right big toe meets my foot was pulsing with pain. My fault for wearing not totally broken boots to work. I was actually glad for this pain because it reminded me of a very important anniversary. Eighteen years ago on Halloween I was in Chicago preparing for foot surgery the next day.
Personal history suggests I have been able to accomplish very little in my life in a low-key fashion. This surgery was no exception. Suddenly in the summer of 2005, my heretofore reliable foot betrayed me. Until then I had, for more than a decade, walked at least four miles nearly every day. Walking did not only help me stay fit physically, it was also crucial to keeping my ever tricky mental health in a safe zone most of the time.
An x-ray revealed that I had a condition called Hallux Rigidus, which is fancy for “stiff big toe,” and which I have always held sounds like the name of some porno star. The doctor I consulted explained the best solution would be to fuse the toe which, he admitted, could limit my mobility permanently.
I was distraught. I could not afford a second opinion. Nor could I afford the recommended surgery. This all went down pre-Obamacare, when my so-called pre-existing conditions kept my self-employed ass from qualifying for insurance of any sort. I gave up my daily walks, acquired a cane, and endured excruciating pain with every step.
It really sucked.
As it happened, during this same period of time I was taking care of two little kids whose mother had died suddenly. They were the niece and nephew of a very good friend. I’d offered the widower brother of my friend help because I had the time and the skills to do so. I did not expect anything in return. For despite loathing nearly every aspect of my religious upbringing, I have always liked the part of the message about how we must take care of one another.
As it also happened, these little kids had another uncle who had a good friend in Chicago who was a podiatrist. It was arranged that the podiatrist would take a look at the x-ray and offer me a free second opinion. Though I was only 41, he pronounced I definitely had the right foot of a 70 year-old. He also said he could fix it for me without fusing, and that I would regain full, pain-free mobility.
But wait, there’s more. He made an astonishing offer. If I could get myself to Chicago and bring $5,000 to cover the cost of a surgical suite—much cheaper than a hospital—and his assistants, he would waive his fees and operate for free.
Let’s take a moment here to reflect on how, while it is true that I have been through some super crazy, super dark, super violent life experiences, on the other end of the spectrum I have been on the receiving end of preposterous kindness more than a few times in my life.
As if they hadn’t done enough already, the extended family of the little kids—understanding that while $5,000 was a great bargain, it was still out of reach— threw a Halloween fundraiser for me, aptly titled Foot the Bill. And just like that, I was off to the Windy City to receive the gift of being able to walk again unaided and pain free.
Due to my aforementioned (lack of) budget, I dug around for someplace other than a hotel to stay. This was pre-AirBnb/VRBO but amazingly I came across a woman who was a retired journalist who rented out rooms in her house for cheap. Due to the fact I would need help caring for myself, my son’s father, who lived in St. Louis, agreed to come up, take me for the procedure, and stay a couple of days until I could fend for myself.
We met up at the home of Carole, who turned out to be Marge Simpson’s missing sister. The layer of cigarette smoke blanketing the inside of her house offered an ambience that fell somewhere between a disco and a forest fire. In her gravelly voice she asked how we knew each other. When I explained we had a child together, she rasped, “Oh, then you won’t mind sleeping together.”
Seeing as we had not been together or even lived in the same city, let alone slept together, in a dozen years, we did mind. Very much. Thus it came to pass that he was assigned a “room” that was up some ladder that led to a weird crawl space above a closet while I was put in her adult son’s childhood bedroom, still strewn with the trappings of a little boy.
As a further cost-cutting measure, I skipped the full anesthesia option and agreed to have a “block.” The doctor twilighted me lightly into a state of heavy snooze, injected something into my leg that made it feel as if the leg did not exist, and then he went to work. I attribute my PTSD-induced hyper vigilance to the fact that I easily broke through the twilight and woke up during surgery. I could hear the saw buzzing and I swear I saw someone in that room doing a little dance to whatever music they had playing.
“She’s awake,” someone announced, aghast. They must have upped the ether then, because next thing you know it was all done and, to my astonishment, I was able to exit the surgical suite on crutches and feeling remarkably perky.
Then the block wore off. The pain was outrageous. My son’s father stuck around a few days, doling out pain meds and monitoring my recovery until, at last, he had to return home.
Which left me with Carole, whose behavior became increasingly erratic. One night she returned home very excited to announce she had rented us Legally Blonde. She insisted I drag my drugged out ass over to her room, where she had me sit beside her in her big bed and drool out one side of my mouth as we took in that cinematic masterpiece.
Carole, well into her sixties, was a chatty one and went on at length about how she had a hot lover, a married Japanese man, who really knew how to satisfy her hyperactive Scorpio libido. She added that she didn’t really need his services as she was quite skilled at satisfying her own needs. At one point, I hazarded a glance to her side of the bed and noticed her pants were gone.
I could not understand or explain the missing pants then. I cannot explain it now.
Another day dawned and with it the exciting news that Carole had gone and rented us yet another movie: Legally Blonde II.
By now, my mind a paranoid mess courtesy of all the Vicodin coursing through my veins, I began to grow fearful, as if something sinister were afoot (<— see what I did there?). I still had another day and night to get through before my return flight to Austin. I did not see how I would manage both my pain and the antics of my pants averse hostess.
Which is when my friend Sue, also from St. Louis, made an offer I couldn’t refuse. She had an aunt who lived in Chicago. She—Sue—would come scoop me up and take me to her aunt’s for a nice, restful final night.
Sue’s aunt happened to be a nun, quite old, part of an inner-city convent that was slowly dying off. They had a sort of a dorm setup. And so it came to pass that I bid hot-to-trot, sans-a-pants Carole a hasty farewell and briefly took up residence in a nunnery.
All of this came back to me this weekend as my foot throbbed and I recalled a time when that was all it did, pain day and night. This foot bears a magnificent long scar, proof that this absurd story is not one I made up.
The doctor who fixed my foot told me that I would get five to ten years of use out of it before the repair would wear out and something new would need to be done. This has not been the case. I don’t walk as much as I used to, but I still walk plenty and the foot still serves me, not only as a means of getting around, but as a reminder of that time in my life—and all the times in my life—when friends and strangers alike pulled together to get me through.
NOTES:
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This week’s question: What’s something really weird that happened to you?
I hope your foot feels better! You have had an extraordinary life! Something weird that happened to me: In 2010, my old beau convinced me to rent a cottage downtown in our Florida town from his friends when I was moving out of my condo. It was 600 square feet, unheated, built in the 1920s and moved with three other cottages to that site in the 1930s. There was lots of haunted house stuff: The CD player would turn itself up at particularly ominous lyrics in songs, on days of no wind or traffic, the doors would dramatically creak and slam shut. Then dead centipedes started appearing in this cottage. One night I walked to the kitchen and saw a humanoid creature in a black cloak washing dishes at the 1940s-era sink. It was like seven feet tall, its back to me. I'm like, Nope, so I went and sat outside and called my friend Stephanie. Now, I knew a rumor that there had once been an 1850s cemetery near there, but the bodies had been taken to Pensacola and reinterred around 1890. So I casually mention it to someone who says, Oh, yeah, the state came and dug to make sure all the bodies are gone, probably records somewhere. I googled the centipedes and found out they BREED IN CEMETERIES AMONG THE BODIES THAT WEREN'T EMBALMED PROPERLY. So I get myself to the state archeology report from 17 years earlier, which concluded that ONLY SIX OF DOZENS OF PROBABLE BODIES WERE REMOVED! Then I confront my old beau, who was like, Aw, I was afraid of that -- by the way, a murder victim from the early 1920s was probably interred there and his descendants have been trying to find his bones, so.... (P.S. The landlord, who was the most passive-aggressive weirdo I ever knew, and that was a HIGH BAR, tried to not give me back my security deposit, and I was forced to send her a letter detailing how a) that was a required disclosure and b) I would stand on a street corner to tell everyone there were BODIES THERE)
Foot the Bill! I love it! I am also having a foot issue (probably more like an ankle and heel issue but it connects to the foot donchaknow). Walking, which I've done miles of, is now difficult. Bone spurs due to achilles tendon issues and I am STILL waiting to get to see a podiatrist. Possible that it can be solved with a boot and specific exercises? Possible still that I'll need an operation in which case I am going to shamelessly steal this fundraising title.
Something weird that's happened to me this week, since you asked, is I'm having visitation dreams from my mother. One was specially realistic so given that it's spooky season, I'm wondering what the hell is up. Seems omen-inous.