A few days after I returned from Las Vegas, I visited my doctor. Show and Tell Time. I carried into his surgery a huge bag stuffed with shoes, orthotic inserts, and gel heels. I was just about at the end of my tether.
"Do you know what I've been wearing for nine months? Nine months? Nine loooooong months?" I all but hollered. "These - !" I shook a clunky hiking sandal in my doctor's face. "And these - !" I flourished forth a thick-soled pair of black New Balance trainers. "And what about these-! A swag of shoe inserts landed on his desk, followed by half-a-dozen shoes that hadn't made the grade.
My doctor said he took it that I still had plantar fasciitis of the heel?
"How would your wife like to wear hiking sandals and trainers every time she went out of the house for nine loooooong months!" I tried not to sound bitter, but I guess the poor guy could see through me. He commiserated, said he understood.
How could this man understand that for nine months I couldn't wear dangling chandelier-like ear-rings, or a pretty frock, or feminine clothes because "I have to dress down to match my footwear!"
I told him about how by my third to last day in Las Vegas, mid-afternoon, I had to stumble back to my room at the MGM Grand because I couldn't walk anymore. I told him how I'd spent months pre-Vegas, searching for just the right glitter clothes to wear at night and how because of my stupid foot I couldn't go out at night because by day's end in Vegas, I could hardly hobble.
I told him how I wore an ordinary pair of pretty sandals for the first two nights of my holiday - only two lousy nights - because I wanted to look normal for a change. And that those 'normal' sandals, coupled with walking on casino marble floors, ruined my heel for the rest of my stay.
I told him how, whilst staying at the MGM Grand (five nights), the only way I could get around the room was by pushing a wheelie chair ahead of me as a 'walker'.
And that was when I burst into tears.
The doctor could only commiserate. "The healing takes time," he said.
Well .... I've booked for a summer holiday of hiking on Waiheke Island for this coming summer. Last summer I could only hobble backwards and forwards to the bus stop at Waiheke. If I can't hike there this year, I will go back to my doctor, and I will have an honest-to-goodness tantrum. Sigh.
Oh, above is a pic of me, taken at the MGM Grand, with the wheelie chair that I had to use as a walking frame for the last five days of my holiday.
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