Sunday, January 7, 2007

With Pain in Toe

I have now in my acquaintance someone who enjoys cracking random people's toes. Yes, he does in fact just walk up to any available foot where innocent little piggies are exposed and give them a yank. It's kind of weird. From time to time I see the toe glint come into his eyes and I know to brace myself for not only some snap, crackle, and pop, but also for the expression of pure, unadulterated satisfaction to appear on his face. This happened on Tuesday night. Only this time he was unable to crack my big toe. Being the wonderful person I am, I haw-hawed at his failure, and firmly grabbed my own toe and gave it a good crushing. Nothing happened, except it felt a little funny. And started to hurt quite a lot the next day.

We went to a wedding on Wednesday night and I sort of ignored my pain and danced the night away anyhow. Big mistake. While sleeping, I kept getting interrupted by little messages of ouchiness travelling up my leg. I find throbbing to be a weird sensation. It's like I now have a mini little heart in my toe that loves to pound out more than a catchy beat. Basically I've been hobbling around since, but the pain has been bearable, for the most part. Until last night.

I have no idea what happened, but my poor little toe started wailing and screaming and biting and just being darned cantankerous. I was in Vancouver and had to drive home using my HEEL on the gas pedal. Very safe, yes. I then could barely walk into my house and getting into bed provided none of the usual blissfulness.

I have never injured myself before and so I found myself in uncharted territory. I remembered that elevation is good, ice is good, some anti-inflammatories are good. Well, I had no drugs, and I figured that if I propped my foot up onto my big stuffed bear, that could count as elevation, but I couldn't figure out how to wrap ice around my toe with a tea towel.

Finally, after two hours of whimpering, moaning, and yelling at my toe (and myself for being such a wimp), I attempted some mind-over-matter strategies. Sometimes when I'm wounded I like to pretend I'm someone really strong, like The Rock or a viking or something. Those dudes definitely can handle the pain from something as insignificant as a toe. I imagined my huge muscles and shrugged my shoulders and was like, what pain? That worked for about 30 seconds, then I just focussed on my breathing and pretended that I didn't even have legs. That actually worked for about a minute, but then I realized that drugs would be a much better strategy - less thinking involved.

Operation: find drugs. Difficult at 5 am. Roommate sleeping. I wrapped myself in my duvet, got on my hands and knees, and started crawling. I discovered that not only is crawling with a duvet and sprained/broken/crushed/gangrenous toe rather difficult, but that my other roommate just happened to have a massive bottle of Tylenol on her bed. Oh glory!! So I downed about three of those puppies and headed to bed. Then I waved my fingers over my belly and started chanting very persuasively: "Little Tylenols, my loyal white friends, may you dissolve like you've never dissolved before. May you travel quickly to my toe or my pain receptors in my brain, or wherever it is you go. I will pay your cab fare. I will put your children through college. Ah, my friends, my friends. The trinity of bliss. Thou holy fount of every blessing..."

And so I slept.

I'm going to the clinic tomorrow if this keeps up. Honest.

Oh, and I got a digital camera!!!!!! I have pics of my poor toe but I don't know how to get them on here yet. In time your eyes will be dazzled by my many escapades.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh how well i can imagine you doing something like breaking your own toe. Less than a year ago it would have been my room you'd be crawling into to find drugs and probably totally freaking me out in the middle of the night. sorry to hear about the pain :( hopefully you feel better soon!!!GO TO THE CLINIC (not that they can do much for a broken/crushed toe... but it'll make you feel better!). ~M

Anonymous said...

ha ha! wicked awesome post. you're crazy! i love it. sometimes i also like to imagine that you're The Rock... and i too find it quite difficult and resort to drugs (shhh.. don't tell). get bed der, you.

Anonymous said...

after a fit of laughter i thought to leave a comment, but what to say? the story pretty much speaks for itself. i could completely picture all the events transpiring which made it even more entertaining. this reminded me of a certain random toe cracker i live with (my dad finds it fun) he too gets the "toe cracking gleam" in his eye. when i told him your story he laughted and then being a science geek/ doctor he informed me that you sprained the joint capsule of your big toe. he also informed me that you are not supposed to crack your big toe, only the little ones (and he would know 'cause he's a professional). now nurse your poor toe back to health, i find that wallowing in self pity helps the pain sometimes. just a thought

Natasha Kay said...

I broke my pinky toe last year when I accidently rammed it into an old metal suitcase that was up against the wall...the wall won. Unfortunately, it's never been the same since. A broken toe (or finger) can take about 8 weeks to heal -- that is, before the pain goes away just from simply bending it. But it's a new shape now and doesn't match my other pinky toe. Shame, really.

I read in your previous post that you went home over the Coq for the holidays...where is that? We went to my hometown of Summerland for Christmas, where I lived before moving to Vic 10 years ago.

Anonymous said...

yup. it's high time somebody wrote a new post. maybe not you... but somebody.