MY WET HEEL [M, 6-14-21]

 CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

MY WET HEEL         [M, 6-14-21]

 

So, for a couple of weeks now, when I walk, the inside of my right heel feels wet. At first, I wondered if it were blood. Nope. Then I wondered how I could spill water, only on the inside of my right heel, each time I walked. Happens in all my shoes, so it’s not the shoes, despite what Spike Lee might say.

 I dare not tell Helen, or she will want me to go to the doctor, which I eschew, for I am a McFarland man, and we don’t do things like that, except to make fun of the doctor for not knowing which side the heart is on. We’re always up for something like that.

[You may recall that when Dr. V said she was going to listen to my heart, and put her stethoscope up high on the right side of my chest, I said, “You know it’s on the other side, right?” She was kind enough to smile indulgently, while explaining how you can hear the heart in more than one place. Personally, I think that’s just an excuse doctors use when they forget what they learned in Tony Mescher’s anatomy class.]

For obvious reasons, I didn’t want to go to Dr. V with my wet heel problem, so I emailed my friend, Glenn, because that’s what I do when I have a terminal illness, like the time I slipped and hit my head on the concrete patio and didn’t want to tell Helen but felt someone should know in case I didn’t wake up. Helen knows to email Glenn when I die to find out why. I told him to tell her that this time it was WIRHS. [Wet Inside Right Heel Syndrome].

He suggested that maybe I could research it, so I did. Would you believe it, there really is a WIRHS?!

I Googled “Why is the inside of my right heel wet?” and about a million other people had already asked the same thing, causing about a million doctors to say, “It’s illegal to give medical advice over the internet, but it sounds like you have WIRHS.” Apparently, “liquid heel” is a very popular malady these days.

Of course, the cause is the usual suspect, OTS [Old Timers Spine].

When you’ve lived a long time, your OTS has had to put up with a lot—falling, jarring, twisting, whacking, soft drinks and coffee [bone deterioration], slouching.

Malcolm Gladwell says [Outliers] that you have to put in ten thousand hours to be really good at something, and I’ve put in far more than that in learning to slouch well. Also in drinking coffee. And the jarring of long-distance running. My OTS has endured a lot more than ten thousand abuses.

The spine is full of nerves, and every time one of them gets pinched or pushed or pulled, it sends out a signal to some part of the body saying, “Hurt. Now!” There is a particular nerve that sends a signal to the inside of my right heel that says, “Feel wet!”

Dr. V would probably explain this differently, but she doesn’t even know which side… oh, I’d better shut up about that, since she’s the one who has the drugs in case the WIRHS gets too bad.

Glenn says I’m okay as long as that one nerve doesn’t kick in, the one that says “Feel wet!” to my lap.

John Robert McFarland