… My Right Foot and other tales of horror

DO NOT SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM.

YOU WILL REGRET IT.

Well, Doctor.  You know how if you’ve watched a Rocky film or a Bond movie, you might get carried away and shadow-box a bit, or maybe burst through a couple of doors checking for enemy agents?

Go on.

Well, l I’d been watching La La Land on my own late at night. In just my socks. And the recently polished tiled floor in the kitchen was more slippery than I thought. And I’m a worse dancer than I’d realised… And sort of…whoosh…and bang!^*

Aww.  What a waste of a lovely night.  Shall we take a look?

Sure.  Here you go…

GOOD GOD, MAN!  (vomiting in the bin) What’s happened to your foot???

What do you mean?

Let’s maybe start with the shape?

Oh, right. Well, I was on a stag do in Cardiff – it’s not what you think: I’d just arrived and was rushing to find the hotel – and I slipped stepping off the kerb to overtake an old lady and it sort of “crunched”. The groom and his brother both said I should have got an x-ray^**.

And what does the groom do for a living, may I ask?

He’s an orthopaedic consultant in Bolton.

And the brother?

An orthopaedic consultant in Leeds.

And what did the X-ray show?

Dunno.  Never went.

I see.  What about those blisters?

Lockdown.

Eh?

I’ve been doing a lot of stuff on Zoom so it doesn’t matter if I’m wearing work shoes, so with eighteen months of barefoot, socks and crocs my feet have grown from a size twelve to a thirteen.  So those blisters on that side are from wearing posh shoes which don’t fit any more.*** And the bigger blisters are from walking funny because of how sore the little blisters are. ^****

And these strange lacerations on the big toe?

Those are middle-classness injuries.

What?

Well I originally caught them on the drainage vents of a swimming pool at CenterParcs.  But then at the start of Covid I aggravated them with carpet-burns doing what I think was a bear crawl doing PE With Joe Wicks. *****

Maybe if I take a look at… are you wearing nail polish on your toenails?

A bit.

Your nine toenails?

You see, we got bored during lockdown and my daughter wanted to paint my nails.  Initially I left them because I thought they were quite snazzy, but now I use them as a form of melancholy hourglass showing how long it’s been as the nails slowly grow out.^******

I was more interested in the nine toenails.

Oh, I’ve got the tenth. I keep in in a little box with my cufflinks.

I more meant how come there are nine?!

Stuart Benson stood on my foot wearing rugby studs.

Was he a particular rival opposition player?

No.  My team.  And in fairness he didn’t knock it off.  He just caused the bruising under the nail that made it loose and wobbly.  It was catching it in the poppers of my duvet and rolling over in my sleep that actually ripped it off.

A lot of blood?

A lot of blood.  And screaming.

And it that a verruca?

I prefer to leave them alone ever since my dad treated one when I was a kid with the pen-knife he kept to clean out his pipe.  I’m funny like that.

The ingrown toenail?

Toenails. Four of them. My housemates made me get them sorted because they didn’t like me salt-water soaking them in the casserole dish. Surgically treated back in the year 2000. All on the same day. Bloody sore. I was bedbound for the Sydney Olympics, though: that was brilliant. But then the wound got infected. So when I started GP training the next month I had to wear black and yellow foam rubber sandals with socks, because they were all I could fit over the dressings. When I finally wore normal shoes, they admitted at the surgery that they hadn’t liked to comment and thought that I’d worn the sandals and socks because I liked them.

The gout?

Unlucky I guess.

The calluses?

Couch to Five K.

The funny shaped toenails?

A gift?

Doctor Brown?

Yes, Doc?

Go home!

*This is a true story

**Also true

***Again true

****And again

*****And this one

Look. To save time, every single one of these injuries or ailments is true.

DON’T LOOK ANY FURTHER. THAT’S PLENTY. SEE YOU NEXT TIME!

PLEASE!

YOU’LL NEVER BE ABLE TO UN-SEE IT!

I AM TRULY SORRY.