Interruption

This afternoon an attractive 50-something year old man washed my feet and put my socks back on and laced up my shoes. Sadly, this was not a lover or even a pedicurist, but a technician at a podiatrist's office. Since I've been able to put on my socks and tie my shoes myself for at least a few decades, I felt rather foolish having him do the honors. There I was, my legs stretched out in front of me as I sat on the podiatry chair, jacked up to a height of about five feet off the ground. He said it was standard practice and, from what I observed in the waiting room, many patients are probably not capable of tying their shoes.

When I first arrived for my appointment, to check out some persistent pain in my left foot, I was one of the few fully ambulatory people around. Mostly older folk maneuvered in their wheelchairs and walkers, negotiating the path between the door and the reception desk. One man, his thinning hair slicked back with grease and his belly as round as that of the Buddha, was missing a foot. The receptionist handed me a stack of papers to fill out; on the top was written "Diabetic Foot Wound Center" and I asked her if, indeed, I was in the right place.

"Yes," she said. "Don't worry about that language. We take care of everything below the knee."

Below the knee. It was not an expression I'd heard before and, while it's true that my foot is below my knee, it can also affect areas above my knee, such as my hip and spine. But ours is specialized medical world and there was not much I could do about that. As I made my way through the forms, a woman in a motorized wheelchair returned to the waiting area from a consultation room; she wore specially made shoes, her head was held in place by a brace and her arms were covered with black fabric, obscuring her hands or where her hands might have been. Suddenly, my foot problem - and everything else on my mind - seemed quite trivial.

The podiatrist's analysis confirmed my suspicion of a pronated left foot; it has always tended to turn in but now the difference between my left and right feet had become quite stark and the imbalance was painful. My hiking habit will be interrupted for a few weeks while I wait for my orthotics to be made. In a saner system, my health insurance would cover the cost of these inserts, as they'll keep me active and probably prevent me from developing knee trouble later, which would be more costly to fix but would likely be covered. Such is the world we live in.