I have a hole in my foot...

On a normal day, I have a fairly high tolerance level for pain. It's a frequently commented on fact that I hurt myself a lot and there's rarely a day when I'm not sporting some bruise, burn, bump, cut, scuff or slice. What I simply cannot handle though is foot pain. I just can't deal with it. And God, in His infinite wisdom and more infinite sense of humor, gave me a lot of foot issues, I think just to test my limits.

About a year ago, my plantar's warts came back on the bottom of my feet, right where I'd had them cut out and frozen off about 15 years ago. I tried to ignore them. I prayed that they would go away. I pretended they didn't exist. But when it started hurting just to walk and my boss was affectionately referring to me as "fungus foot" I broke down and made the first of what has turned into numerous appointments with the podiatrist. And so begins my story...

The first appointment wasn't too bad, aside from the fact that the doctor touched my feet and yelled at me for wearing flip flops. She looked at the warts and told me that rather than attempting to cut them out or freeze them, she would rather give me a shot of medication that takes about four weeks to kill them and then they could just be "scraped" off, for lack of a less gross word. I was only going to be able to do one foot at a time though so I left there knowing that I had one appointment down and at least 3 more to go.

A week later I went back, fully prepared for my one shot that would take care of two warts in my one foot which would make it a little tender for a couple hours but then I figured I would be well on my way to pain-free pedestrianism.

...

When I was taken back to the room I was put on a chair they lifted up about three feet off the ground so that when my leg was stretched out in front of me, my foot would be at the doctor's eye level as she sat. The podiatrist's assistant who I'm still not convinced was more than 15 years old brought me a stuffed lion and said, "Here, you're going to need this." Fabulous. Well, then I started getting a little nervous and the butterflies in my stomach went all kinds of crazy when I saw the size of the needle the doctor whipped out. The needle was going to be used twice to administer anaesthetic into my toe and the ball of my foot. Apparently, it would be too painful to just put in the medicine so my whole foot needed to be numb. At this point, I realized my shot count just soared from one to three and every muscle in my body tensed up.

As the doctor put the huge needle into the bottom of my toe I unintentionally held my breath. She looked up at me and said, "Now I'm going to have to put this in just a little bit at a time. Oh, and keep breathing." I cringed every time she pushed the syringe down but after about two minutes my toe was well on it's way to la-la land. She picked up the next syringe, tapped me on the inside of my foot and said, "I'm going to put this right here and I need to put it into your nerve center." In the fraction of a second that I had to process what she had said before she actually stuck the needle in, I freaked out. She put the needle into the side of my foot and looked up and said, "Are you doing okay?"

I smiled and said, "Yeah, I'm great!"

"No you're not, you just turned completely white." Right about that time the room started spinning, the doctor started fanning me and pushed some magical button on the wall that caused two assistants to come in and start shoving Saltines and bottled water down my throat. I've never passed out before, but I have a pretty good inkling that I was teetering on the edge of conciousness.

The doctor and one of the assistants left the room to give me time to get blood back to my head and the poor girl who was left in there kept asking me questions about where I work and what I like to do. While the rational part of my mind knew that she was just trying to keep me functioning, an irrational and hallucinating part of my mind wanted to throw her into next week for making me think. After one walk to the bathroom, a near throw-up moment, and about 20 more minutes, the doctor came back and said she was going to have to pick up where she left off bringing my shot count up to four.

I endured the last of that anaesthetic injection and waited patiently for it to take over my foot but secretly hoped it would come up through my entire bloodstream and numb my embarrassment of the incident that was playing out. The doctor injected the actual medicine with two very small, normal-sized needles bringing my shot count up to five (three shots to numb my foot, two to put in the medication...yeah, chew on that for awhile.) After a few encouraging "this happens all the time" talks and another scolding for wearing flip-flops, I left the office with shaky hands and my head hanging in shame.

Four days ago it was time for my follow-up visit to "scrape" out the now dead warts on my right foot and the medicine injection in my left. They were prepared for me this time...a teddy bear and a bottle of water awaited my arrival. My nerves were so bad I nearly walked out of the house without a shirt on that morning, but I too went prepared with my iPod playing and my phone in my hand. I figured text messaging would provide a brilliant distraction. The removal of the warts on my right foot was uncomfortable and painful, but didn't cause any extreme distress. Then it was time for the shots on the left foot. I turned my music up loud and watched as the podiatrist pushed a needle the size of a paperclip into my foot and I sat patiently as she injected the anaesthetic bit by bit. At one point she looked up and said, "You're turning white again. Here, fan yourself with this." Awesome. This just solidified my spot as "that girl."

After she took out the needle she left the room for a few minutes to let my foot go to sleep. I sat there and watched as blood rolled down my foot and dripped onto the floor. I thought it would probably be a good idea to wipe it up but then realized that I was three feet in the air and my "good" foot had a hole in it so I couldn't step down anyway. I started getting a little panicky and did what any self-respecting person in my position would do. I text messaged Charlotte Coffee and said, "There's blood running down my foot and the doctor left the room. What do I do?"

"Calm down, deep breaths, don't move...you'll be fine."

I wrote back and said, "Well I am fine. But there's blood all over their floor."

"That's their problem."

Oh.

So I continued to sit and wait until someone came in and cleaned up my foot and the floor. As the podiatrist was injecting the actual medication I said, "Why did you become a foot doctor?" She looked up, I think a bit surprised at the question and said, "Well, it was something different. There were hardly any women in podiatry at the time and I knew I wanted to be a doctor, but I didn't want to be in life and death situations. I didn't want to go home and try to get to sleep every night wondering if I had done something wrong that cost a person their life." She sort of looked off into space for a moment, nodded her head and said, "I kind of wish I had become a surgeon, but I can't complain. Podiatry has been good to me." We exchanged a smile and I realized that I was probably being treated by a really remarkable person whose story I would never really know.

Right about the time I started feeling a little sentimental, her whole demeanor changed as she looked at the floor next to my chair and said, "I know you didn't wear those flip-flops back in here! Seriously Jennifer, I'm doing all this work for nothing if you don't get rid of those things. Please get yourself some new shoes and throw those in the trash." She walked out of the room shaking her head at my twenty-something stubborn ignorance and I followed out a few steps behind, hanging my head, but thankful for our momentary connection.

Three appointments down, and one more to go...