It's been a while since I posted.  I started one recently, but it's still in the drafts.  This won't be long.  I hope.  Because it's a lament, and it's late at night as I write it.  Bascially, I'm feeling sorry for myself.  But I've always found that it's best to just give yourself license to feel sorry for yourself occasionally, but you have to put a time limit on it.  I'm allowed to throw myself a little pity part until I go to sleep, which will be soon, and then tomorrow I'll get up and give the dogs kisses, and let them out, and greet my fiance with a kiss, and tell the refrigerator guys where to put the new fridge, and dump the stuff out of the old one real fast, and answer questions at work, and so on and so on, until the end of the day when I go back to bed.  And then we'll have gotten through another day, and it's all good.

The lament is for my left foot, which, now that I write that, seems rather as though Daniel Day-Lewis should come around the corner and start spouting an Irish accent.  But it's a serious lament.  Because right now the nerves of my foot are so over-active, and the foot is in so much pain, that I'm scared to go to bed, because the sheets will hurt.

And the lament is because this has been getting worse for the last couple of months, but I just thought it was related to any number of weirdnesses about my body, so I accepted it.  And it didn't seem that bad.  But last Sunday it suddenly flared so badly that I could barely walk, and it's continued since.

Monday I tried to get a podiatrist appt, but could not get one until next week, so I just went to my GP, who ordered an x-ray.  The x-ray ended up showing arthritis.  ARTHRITIS.  I turn 50 in two months - seriously, this could not have at least waited until the calendar flipped?  He took the x-ray because he though it might be a stress fracture, but no.  ARTHRITIS.  I realize stress fractures are horrible and if anyone who ever reads this has one, they would be like, "oh, no, girl, you don't want a stress fracture", but seriously, I think I would prefer that.

One person said, "oh, yea, I think I have that in my knees."  Which again, not saying that's not painful and a huge hit to an active person.  But you can have your knee replaced.  You hip.  They replace all kinds of thing.  But not feet.  Not one is loping off a person's foot and replacing it with a better, faster foot that looks just like your old foot and works just as well.

My foot.  My feet.

I've always had painful feet.  I was surprised when I talked to a friend one time, and she told me that most people's feet don't hurt.  You don't end the day with the feeling that you have a couple pounds of ground round attached to the bottom of your legs.  Your feet don't feel bruised to the point where, at times, it's an effort to take another step.  But I've accepted this - it's all just part of who I am.

But this burning.  The nerves.

And I love to walk.  And I'm heavy - which I'm sure doesn't help the problem - so I need to walk.  I should be walking briskly for a minimum of 20 mins four times a week.  Meanwhile, I have no shoes on at the moment because the pain of having a shoe touch the top of my foot is too great.

I was sitting on the couch just before bed, and my fiance came upstairs.  I said, 'would you do me a favor,' and he said yes (well, actually he said no, but he's just contrary like that - he meant yes), and I said "touch my foot.  lightly.  with your finger."  And he thought I was joking, I guess (plus he's not especially fond of feet) so he leaned down and started moving his foot down, and at one point his foot was below my cuff, and I couldn't tell if he was touching the foot or not, so I look, and then he touches the foot, and at first it was okay.  But a couple seconds in, it was starting to burn.   And this is the lightest touch, not much more than a feather's weight, and I say, "okay, stop" but he doesn't, because often light touches like this are nice.  And I say, "okay, that hurts - stop."  But he doesn't, and I can't blame him, because his finger is barely touching my skin, and it's been moving there less than five seconds, so how can that hurt?  And finally I start to cry, and I say, "please, stop", but he doesn't realize I'm crying because he's watching his finger lightly, lovingly trace the top of my foot.  And finally I'm like, STOP IT THAT REALLY HURTS I'M SERIOUS.  And he stops and looks up, and says, 'Seriously, this cannot hurt that much?" and I'm crying and saying, "yes, it does.  It does."  And while writing this and reading this take forever, and you mihgt think, "he's horrible - how could he not stop earlier", truly, it was the space of seconds, and he was being so delicate with his touch - it's crazy that it could hurt that much.  But it did.  And it does.

So tonight I want to cry.  I want to mourn.  Because I'm only 50, and this hurts so much.  Because I want to walk and walk and walk - thousands of miles before I'm dead.  But right now, just sitting here not moving I can feel the foot burning.  Because my foot HURTS, and I don't want it to.

I know there are MANY, MANY other problems, and as such things go, a foot isn't so bad.  Of course, things aren't being aided by the fact that I also have an appt with a cardiologist this week, because, as my GP said, "your heart doesn't look as good as it should for someone your age."  And this with my birthday still two months off!!

But still, my foot HURTS.  And I want to walk and run and play.