One Foot Out The Door

Not that I am a mind reader, but Charlotte clearly meant business. If she did not already have her Spidey senses on high alert, she would have just said she was checking in. This was a specific question. Her way of simply beginning to scratch the surface.

Channeling Florence Nightingale, for sure, she had heard me mention the foot at least a dozen times, seen me wince in uncharacteristic pain a few more times, and had mentally filed through her 3 by 5 cards of nursing school notes to assess the situation. She doesn't need to diagnose. She just needs to know it falls outside the range of normal.

Please. I spend two thirds of every day outside the range of normal. This should shock no one.

I call her. I can hear her figuratively tapping the toe of her white-shoed foot on the kitchen tiles.

I downplay the situation.

She's odnto me in a minute. I am like the diabetic who ate the Twinkie and is standing there holding the cellophane wrapper claiming to have no idea why their sugars would be off the charts.

Can you send me a picture?

Eeeeewwww. I don't even want to look at it much less take an police photo of the crime scene. Yuck.

She asks me if it is hot.

Hot, well, no. Hotter than the foot that is not propped up on the trash can, yes. But hot is a relative word. What do you mean by "hot" exactly? How hot is too hot. Feelin' hot, hot hot!

She takes that "Don't make me call you an idiot" tone I can recognize in the lowest of volumes. "Liza....."

OK OK OK. I will find an urgent care facility on the way home. I will drive there with my 2-pounds-of-ground-chuck foot and let them grimace and quickly write a barely legible script just to get me to put my sock back on and leave. They are unaccustomed to such gore at the Urgent Care. They are more the Strep Throat culture threshold for grossness.

Charlotte is not convinced. Calls me on the way to make sure my car doesn't accidentally just take me home.

I check in. I give the lady at the desk my information. She asks for a job with my company. Off to a great start. No one cares about my foot but Charlotte.

I limp to the pleather chairs area and sit down. Suze Orman is yakking about financial stability in that preachy voice of hers. I find a magazine and engross myself in a 3 month old article about Matthew McConaughey.

I get called in just when the article begins to get interesting. It is the way the world works. Walk away from the elevator to take the stairs and suddenly the elevator will appear.

I am asked all the usual questions. Am measured for height and weight and get my blood pressure and temperature taken. Nothing to write home about.

The Medical Assistant asks me what I am there for and then asks me to remove my sock. And then my other sock.

Practically fainting from the sight, she leaves the room and returns with the Nurse Practitioner. She looks at my foot. I look at my foot. It is even looking more spiffy now that it has spent the day in black wool socks. A little black lint does a lot to improve the appearance of an inflamed body part, in case you ever need to know that.

She pokes and squeezes and pricks the heel with all manner of instruments. I look away secretly wishing I'd brought the Matthew McConaughey article into the exam room (with all its germs.)

Once the NP is happy with the volume of goo she's been able to render from my ailing limb, she leaves the room.

A few minutes later a doctor comes in. She goes through largely the same exam with a little less emphasis on getting blood from the stone my foot is rapidly becoming. She looks at my good foot. She looks at my face and my eyes. She checks all my glands, which against all logic, requires me to take off my pants. I am sure I am in some kind of alien experiment.

She leaves. Both ladies come back in after what seems like an hour.

They look at each other and then to me. I am sure I am about to be told I have gangrene and there is an amputation in my near future.

One decides it is her responsibility to speak.

"We are on the fence. We think we may need to admit you for IV antibiotics."

As I swoon, my phone begins to ring.