Something’s Afoot

Again with the foot.

Okay, so I’ll take a break from my obsessive running/weightlifting/yoga-doing and other nonstop activity to sit and write about what’s really going on.

The other day, I missed the bottom step of my condo building’s stairwell while reading a Facebook comment. Dumb, I know. But years of seizures gave me lots of falling experience, so I let myself drop to the floor and did a body scan. No pain, just a rapidly swelling ankle.

Now, here’s where I get dumb again. Everyone knows the treatment for a foot ouchie is RICE–the acronym for Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation. So any normal person would have taken the elevator back to our sixth-floor unit for some first aid and R and R.

But remember the title of this blog.

What I did was go with my impulse (something people with TBI tend to do). That impulse led me to walk outside–still masked, of course–for just a bit. Unfortunately, my impulses kept me walking. Why not? I felt great, as I always do when I get in nature.

I walked up the tall hill overlooking the city’s bell tower. Why not, I “reasoned?” I usually run up and around two or three times at the start of a 20- to 30-minute jog, darting around the unmasked.

No surprise–the swelling in my ankle didn’t go down. At this point, any sensible person with a heroic, selfless spouse would have told him the problem and rejoiced that he is able, willing and available to bandage her up.

Again, let me refer you to the title of this blog.

I hid the injury, secretly icing my ankle with a bag of frozen vegetables, while he was on a conference call. My reasoning? He’s overprotective, doesn’t like that I run at all (and, yes, I lied about the not-running for years, even in this blog), and …

… And if I can’t run, I’ll have to think more about what worries me, which is everything. The election, the virus, my husband’s job security, my 27-year-old daughter, my 92-year-old father, the fact that we’re about to make our second move during a global pandemic.

You know, the usual.

Anyway, back to my foot. A similar phenomenon happened a couple of (few?) years ago when I broke the metatarsal on my other foot, which is a fancy way of saying my baby toe got busted up. I was confined to the couch and miserable.

Then my yoga teacher (and dear friend) gave me an assignment: Design three yoga practices that can be done by someone wearing a walking cast. Suddenly I had an immediate goal. My creativity was piqued. I had a blast making use of a chair and the floor for such normally standing poses as Trikonasana (“Tricky Dick Trickonasana”), and I even included selfies in my emails to her.

That assignment ignited my creativity. I returned to the piano, remembering songs I’d learned in childhood and teaching myself new ones. It also got me writing again.

Before I close, I’d like to give a shout-out to my big brother Terry, who told me he reads what I write. When I was 4 or 5, a group of us neighborhood kids were playing in the field next to one boy’s house. A group of older girls were taking turns jumping off a neighboring home’s balcony and sticking the landing (different times). I thought to my little self: “I can do that!”

Nope. Oh, the pain! I cried like the baby I was. Before I knew it, Terry had scooped me in his arms and was running down the hill to our house. I had my first trip to the hospital that day and my first Xray.

Terry and I don’t agree agree about everything (Beatles forever! Duh!), but I love him from the bottom of my foot. And that goes for everybody else!