A bandage on my left big toe was the first thing I saw this morning when I woke up. And it brought on one of those stream of consciousness torrents that feed the nostalgic.
The year was 1955. The year that Walt Disney first opened his dream-drenched amusement park to children.
My mother and my Dad's cousin, Kate, thought it would be a marvelous adventure to drive from the confines of civilization in Powers to the wilds of Anaheim -- both for them and their combined tribe of four children. I am certain I must have been excited about the prospect of being in Disneyland. I have several bits of memorabilia that prove I was there. But I remember almost nothing about the trip -- or the park. With one exception.
For some reason, Mom, Kate, and Kate's two daughters decided to go somewhere. Why Darrel and I did not go is a mystery lost in the eddies of time. But I do remember where they left us -- on Tom Sawyer's Island.
I was 6. Darrel was 4. To be left on our own on an island named for our boyhood hero was like living any boy's dream. We explored. We watched the limited wildlife. Ducks, I think. And we dug in the dirt. That is my most most vivid memory. Digging in the dirt. Lots of digging.
As I read more Mark Twain over the years, I realized my ideal of a boy was not Tom Sawyer. Who I wanted to be his far-less-establishment friend Huckleberry Finn. A free spirit swimming in libertarian aspirations -- or, at least, transactional libertarianism, which is not quite the same thing.
Now, those of you who know me may scoff at the idea of Steve Cotton as Huck Finn. To you, I have all the social constraints of Tom Sawyer -- or, worse, Becky Thatcher (if not her eponymous descendant, Margaret). But we are talking about aspirations here. And Huck Finn it was. For some reason, I always imagined him with a bandage toed around a toe, even though Twain never supplied that detail.
And that brings us back to that bandage on my left big toe.
As you know, I have ramped up my walking regimen in an attempt to restore my eating and exercise lifestyle change that worked for me for almost three years before I fell off the Discipline Wagon. For the past month, I have been restricting my walking to a moderate goal of between five and ten miles a day -- just enough to burn off some excess calories.
My telephone has a great app that collects my exercise data. Steps walked. Miles completed. Time exercising. Calories burned. I can then compare how I have done day-to-day on a choice of charts. All very snazzy. But also a bit dangerous for obsessive folk like me.
Because I have full control over whether the weekly graph goes up or down, I found myself competing to keep each column climbing higher than the previous one. In short, I started competing with myself. And when my competition gene kicks in, my common sense gene is sent to the bench for the duration of the game.
On one of our rainy days last week, I went for a 10-mile walk. My feet have a tendency to blister, and those blisters can lead to major problems. I could feel a pinch blister was beginning to develop between my left big toe and the toe next to it.
Knowing my blister problem, I have purchased some rather expensive socks to wick away moisture from my toes. In the rain, though, it would have taken a bilge pump to keep my toes dry.
A normal person would have stopped the walk and headed back to the house before the blister got worse. But when I am in my let's-get-this-walk-moving mood, pain means nothing. In fact, beating down the pain makes me exercise more.
When I eventually returned home, I knew what I would find, and there it was when I pulled off my sock. A small blister on the in-side of my toe. I walked around barefoot for the rest of the day hoping that my body would re-absorb the water in the blister.
The next morning the blister was still there. Instead of taking a day or two off for the blister to right itself, which would have been the sensible thing to do, I covered it with a band-aid, put on my shoes, and headed off for my walk.
I was not too far from the house when I could feel the band-aid was not cutting down on the friction as I had hoped. Instead, the pain was getting worse. The worse it got, the faster I walked. That was the day I beat myself by walking 15 miles.
I had also beaten my poor toe into submission. When I took off my sock, the blister was so large that it looked as my big toe was giving birth to another digit. I had literally grounded myself. I will spare you a photograph of my handiwork.
So, I put myself to bed. I limited my hobbling around. There certainly was not going to be any walking until the blister was resolved.
I hoped the blister was right itself. But after three days, none of the water had been sucked back into the toe -- and a redness had started developing. A sure sign of a small infection.
Infections in my left leg are always a warning sign to me, and not only because of my diabetes. Six years ago I was hospitalized for three weeks with cellulitis in my left leg that started with a blister on my foot (mad to be home). The thought of another enforced stay or of having my toe (or leg) lopped off is not high on my list of things to do just before I die.
I may do some stupid things (see above), but I do know when I need expert help. Yesterday afternoon I asked my doctor if she had any suggestions. She did.
She said she would usually advise letting the blister heal itself. But the position and size of this blister along with the attendant infection required different action. She drained the water, anointed the wound with ointment, and then wrapped it in its Huck Finn coat. For the next few days I will take antibiotics and monitor that the infection does not spread.
The moral of this tale? There is the obvious one that I should stop walking when I feel a blister developing. But it is the same battle that an alcoholic faces when presented with a drink -- or a smoker with a cigarette -- or almost anyone when offered a piece of chocolate cake that they know they should not eat.
We all make our choices. And we all pay our prices.
My price, however, comes with a nice slab of nostalgia. With my Huck Finn toe, I can return in my mind to Tom Sawyer Island with my brother. And we can dig in the dirt until our hearts are content.
It is a pity that my patio is nothing but concrete. It would be a great place for dig therapy.
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