top celebrity: Das Boot

Jurgen Prochnow is one hell of an actor, but that doesn't change the fact that I have some fucked up feet!

I have my dad's feet.

I remember growing up watching him take a safety razor to the thick calluses on the balls of his feet.

PROBLEM

SOLUTION

Oops! Wrong photo! Sorry!

SOLUTION REDUX

So of course, I treated my calluses the same way. On more than one occasion I have had to seek medical treatment because I trimmed a little to deep. Got me some pink (and not the good kind). Once, I even drew blood. That was stupid.

Of course, I don't inflict that graphic shit on my readers. Unlike SOME people.

DAYum! That's some fucked up shit, emaw!

Anyway, about 25-30 years ago I had a surgical procedure where they go in through the top of the foot, lift up the joint between the metatarsel and the phalange.

This reduces the pressure on the ball of the foot and mostly keeps the calluses from forming.

This was mostly successful for many years.

Then, about a year ago, as I was trying to start some aerobic walking to lose some of the weight gain I experienced after quitting smoking, I started having sharp pains in the arch of my left foot.

I went to my doctor, he couldn't find anything wrong, so he said "Let's start with the foot wear."

He sent me to a specialist shoe place who diagnosed the problem as Plantar Fasciitis. They sold me some obscenely expensive walking shoes, some arch supporting orthotic inserts and a wedge for my left heel.

That mostly solved the problem on those depressingly rare occasions when I actually engaged in aerobic walking.

Mostly I just stuck the orthotic devices in my cheap-ass, WalMart work shoes which helped greatly with my decidedly non-aerobic casual strolls downtown, feasting on the lunch time eye candy.

In recent weeks, I started experiencing a lot of pain in the top of my left foot.

I blamed it on my cheap-ass, WalMart shoes. Fucking WalMart!

It finally got to the point that my foot was swelling up and I could no longer accomodate my swollen foot and my orthotic inserts in the same shoe. So I took the inserts out. Which caused my Plantar Fasciitis to flare up and cause pain in my arches. So like a porn star, my foot was getting it from both directions.

Last Thursday, I finally went to my doctor and got a referall to a podiatrist and made an appointment for this afternoon.

Diagnosis - In addition to my HAWESOME Plantar Fasciitis, I now have a stress fracture in my middle toe. This is the source of the swelling and the pain when the podiatrist drilled his fucking thumb into the Ground Zero of my foot.

TREATMENT: Boot Cast and 500mg Naproxen tabs.

The Naproxen is no big deal. I've taken it before.

But the Boot Cast I have to wear for the next 3-4 weeks is The Bomb.

It's all High Tech! It even has Velcro and other Space Aged Materials.

Back when I had my first foot surgery, I had an oak plank strapped to my foot with some hemp rope. If you stepped on a pebble you had a 3 dimensional see-saw for a shoe.

But this thing is kinda cool! I don't mind wearing it because it actually stops the pain by completely immobilizing the foot and ankle.

But it's not very stylish.

Maybe I can pimp it up!

It looks a little like the Apollo 11 moon boot.