Those of you who have been reading my site for a while may remember that I broke my leg about two months ago. Since then I’ve been on crutches and even had surgery on my leg. I’m the kind of person who likes new experiences, good and bad, and I considered a broken leg to be a new experience. For some strange and sick reason, the first few days after I broke my leg I thought that it was going to be cool. Well let me be the first to tell you that it gets old real fast. Probably the crappiest thing about crutches is that you can no longer carry anything. It really sucks not being able to even get myself a cup of coffee in the morning.
Getting lunch while at work is quite a chore. I had broken my right leg so I didn’t drive for the first month after it happened. Thankfully there was a sandwich shop on the bottom floor of my office building so I could carry my lunch back to my office in a bag. The sandwiches weren’t that filling so once I got a salad too. I put both the sandwich and the salad in the bag and headed back to my desk. After sitting down and looking in my bag I discovered that my crutching around had caused the salad dressing to leak out of the salad container and spill all over the bag, drenching my sandwich. This sort of crap continued until I discovered I could drive with my left leg and subsequently go to a drive-thru.
Most of the time I kept a large blue sock on my right foot to cover up my toes. I figured no one really wanted to see my fat and swollen (at the time) toes, nor would it be appropriate to have my toes showing while dressed up business casual. I only took the sock off to wash it because without it my toes would get very cold. I also was unable to wash my toes or my foot because of the risk of getting the cast wet. This resulted in my right foot being very neglected.
Now my left foot is not a thing of beauty, but it is here for purposes of comparison. That red mark under my left big toe is from wearing a sandal that was uncomfortable. But if you look at my right foot, it looks like it’s suffering from some flesh-eating disease. The toes are darker, it’s very dry, and all the skin is peeling off like after a bad sunburn. This might be a side effect of not washing my foot for two months. It also could be from wearing that blue sock nearly 24/7.
Here’s a picture of the bottom of my foot. Note that the skin is all cracked and dry. There also seems to be a long crack where my foot rests on the end of the cast. One nasty result of the skin peeling off is the prevalence of toe jam. This stuff collects between my toes and has the consistency of earwax, the color of Vaseline, and the odor of poo. Very disgusting.
Let’s just say that I can’t wait until I can wash this horrible reeking thing. I’ve been reduced to taking baths by lying on my back in the tub with my right leg hanging out the side to keep it dry. It’s very hard to get clean this way. I one tried to take a shower by sealing off the opening at the top of my cast with plastic wrap and then wrapping a plastic bag around my leg, but this ordeal took half an hour and I hadn’t taken my shower yet! Not worth the trouble. I suppose I should have gone out and bought one of those cast shower bags but I’m too cheap and lazy for that.
If my leg looks as horrible as my foot when they finally cut my cast off this week, I’ll be sure to post some pictures of that. Stay tuned!
