People Have No Idea

People Have No Idea

So, every now and again things get added to the already full bucket of shit to deal with, and it’s a long process to get answers and solutions. People just have no idea.

Earlier 2025, my left foot had started to hurt. While I was already dealing with my base line of my fifteen years plus disability and the recent hernia surgery, vertigo, etc.

For a while when out in the community I was alternating between grunting/growling or swearing every time I stepped on my left foot. People with chronic pain have become really good at hiding it from others. Because nobody knows how to react when we answer honestly to the age-old question “How are you?”

I know I’ve started being blunter because people will never know if we don’t tell them, and then I must remind them I don’t expect them to fix anything. Because they cannot. I remind people this is why I have such a dark sense of humour and that I appreciate the gentle laughs we share.

Several conversations over time with all the people. The OT, the Podiatrist, my AFO guy in Richmond and to be clear my AFO guy stretched out the side of the AFO using a neat trick of putting lipstick on the raised calluses on my left foot of which there are two.

One particular day in this process I had mentioned it to my Neurophysio while she was working on my left calf and foot.

There was a moment of quiet contemplation where we were not chatting as she did her brand of torture to the muscles in my calf and foot. She sits slightly in my blind spot on my front left but I look down and she has removed her shoe and she is very clearly checking if her foot has the same bumps and bones where mine now has.

She catches me watching her, She’s twenty plus years younger and from the UK. I really like her. I snort a little laugh at her as she thinks she needs to explain what she’s doing. It makes perfect sense; this is not the only time someone alludes or outright tells me I have weird feet. If you haven’t gathered, the point here is it’s a process of elimination.

My GP sends me to the nurses at the clinic he works from and one of those nurses is the other Helen. We now have history also. At that appointment I’m lying on the bed in the nurse’s prep room and checking my foot she calls in the other nurse and I mean, why not make it a party right? Helen says to her colleague, sorry Helen. I don’t mean to offend you, but you have weird feet. Like I hadn’t been telling the beautician this on the few occasions I had her do a foot treatment, me trying to tuck my toes from one foot behind the other, in an effort to hide the very things I was there to have her make them soft and pretty.

I also moved to a much better podiatrist in this process and how to get even more by using tape on my foot to rotate it even a little for her.

Again, I snort a little laugh and my GP finally decided I needed an X-ray and an Ultrasound. I know, sounds extreme right?

One early evening in 2026, my GP calls to tell me of my results. I prompt him with my brand of dark humour. “They say amputate at the knee?” He returns fire with “Yes, the neck down!” Touche!

The diagnosis was a really big cyst of 4mm by 2mm. I know. Huge! It sounds tiny so why does it hurt so much? You know there were ways to put more swear words in there.

So, I don’t know if it’s too late to warn my delicate readers but here’s a picture from only yesterday. So, even after a year this still hurts like a Mother trucker!