So I did go to the doctor today. The office, the staff, and the doctor were all great. There was even a very cool huge fish tank in the lobby. But two things stand out from the visit today, one of which I am betting you have rarely (if ever) heard from a man. To build the suspense, I will commence (sorry, lame) with the less rare, but very painful experience. I point your attention to the title of this blog to emphasize this. It turns out that I do indeed have a bone spur on my right heel, and it is aggravating my achilles tendon, but the cause of the actual pain is a strained planar fasciitis tendon which runs from the bottom of the heel to the ball of the foot. It was inflamed to almost triple the normal size. So the doctors recommendation was to administer a cortisone shot.
I do not like shots, but I have received enough that I am okay with them. I did advise the doctor to close the door to the exam room since I had no desire to deafen everyone with my screaming, and he wisely took my advice. He then told me that usually men scream like little girls, which is odd, because the women never scream.
(Here I will digress, since his statement provoked a mental process that went something like this: The phrase "to scream like a little girl" has been around for a long time. And it is true. There is no one who can scream like a little girl. It is not just that they have volume, because little boys have that too, but they have passion. They have a piercing quality that is unrivaled. They have a register that is so high that dogs will respond. Yet I have personal experience that suggests my little girls never scream that way from pain. Their screams are based again on passion, on grievances, and on feelings, which little boys seem to not have. (Not that little boys have no feelings, but they have different feelings. They are based on aggression, you know this.) No, my daughters and the other little girls that I have seen scream, yes, like little girls, scream because they are MAD. It could be used as the ultimate disaster siren.)
So the doctor pulled out a hypodermic needle that was too long for me to be comfortable with. He advised me that it would hurt. Normally, doctors say the opposite, "Oh, it won't hurt a bit" but not this guy. I was not keen on getting a shot in the bottom of the heel, especially with a needle that looked a definite 10-inches long (since I could imagine that nasty, grating feeling of metal on bone as it found my ankle) but the doctor starts to swab the inner side of my heel. I asked him what he was doing. He said it would hurt less by going in the side. The initial insertion of the now foot-long needle was not too bad with the topical numbing agent he was using, but when he started moving the needle in the foot, from side to side it began in me a slow, but rapidly rising feeling of PAIN. When he took the needle out, I was bleeding pretty heavily, enough to worry the doctor who now had a mess to clean up. When I woke up, I mean, the doc put a bandaid on it and sent me on my way. The great thing was I could no longer feel the pain from the strained ligament since it was overshadowed by the greater pain from the shot.
And now for the very rare thing that I said I would say. Before the trauma, I had an ultrasound. How many guys can say that? It was just of my foot, but I even have a picture to prove it. Neener neener.
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