Oh, My Aching Toes

Precompose Payment #4, April 2023

Dear Sara, my sweet dead sister —

I am thinking about my toes these days; actually, Dear Sara, for years I’ve been wondering what’s happening to my toes.

Last month, on March 14, I finally went to a foot doctor.

The podiatrist, Dr. Kim, was a young, boyish looking man, dressed in green scrubs, and emanating energy as he brought up the X-ray of my toes on his computer, and turning in his small office chair to say, eventually, “I am afraid there’s not much we can do for you.”

I figured as much, it was my age: situation-normal. My toes are arthritic — “wear and tear of the cartilage in your toe joints,” explains Dr. Google. “Acquired hallux rigidus of right foot,” wrote Dr. Kim in his after-visit-summary.

Usually, it’s just an odd stiffness to move the toes, of both feet, as if they are stuffed in prickly wool. But one night, in the very middle, an intense, sharp pain woke me up! The pain was coming out of the top of my toes, as if on fire, I moved my right foot out from under the covers, the pain was intense, then it was scary.

Karen, my wife of four years on April Fools Day, came to my rescue with an over-the-counter arthritis pain gel that she learned about from a visiting nurse her medical plan insisted she host. (She has the same situation-normal with one of her knees.)

It seems to work. I’ve applied the gel every night since, massaging the top of the right foot toes and covering it with a white sock.

I am feeling a pain in the tops of my toes as I write — a gentle, yet sharp pain that’s gone already. It’s as if the firemen below decks are protesting. I worry that my toes are so far away from my brain.

Wonder if you miss YouTube movies, Dear Sara; I came across this one while googling “firemen on ships” and it reminds me of my troop ship experience in the Army, round trip for duty in Germany, at the impressionable age of 18 — when I can not remember ever thinking about my toes!

Promise to cheer things up next month, Dear Sara, with the story of our wedding party four years ago, movie clips from sister Nan, music from nephew Robert and brother Peter — we think about you every day.

If you are new to this letter, please consider inviting yourself to join us reading monthly Letters to Sara; and, if you enjoyed reading this letter, pump the heart red and share with a friend. Thanks ~w.