This doesn’t feel like progress
I went to the bone doctor today, where I learned two things: my shit health insurance (I swear the only thing they cover halfway decently is drugs) isn’t covering the bone doctor visits, so I have to front the cash until this goes to State Farm, and my heel is about halfway there. The bone doc’s team decided to remove my cast regardless of how my foot looked due the level of leg shrinkage (sigh), and once they got a nice picture of the new layer of bone growing into place on my heel, I got a walking boot. This thing kind of blows. Remember those high top shoes we wore back in the 80’s? It reminds me of those, except that this thing weighs about five pounds.
I can walk now using both feet and the crutches; the doctor said to start out putting about 10% of my weight on it and go from there, working with the physical therapist people to build that up and try to get my foot moving again. He forgot to mention that this is impossible. I walk at an old-man pace now, careful with each step not to put too much weight on the foot since I don’t care to break it all over again. If I just lift up that foot and use the crutches alone I can book it pretty well, but I’m supposed to be building things back up or something.
This boot looks ridiculous. It looks sort of like the bottom half of a ski boot, but much thicker on the bottom and wider in the back. It’s slightly more comfortable than a cast, but this is offset by its weight, and my foot hurts a lot more now that I’ve been moving it around a little. The boot is larger than even the baggiest of my pant legs, but at least I can take it off and wash up every now and then. The cast removal didn’t expose a stench for legends like I had expected it would, but there was a lot of dead skin down in there. And lint, somehow.