"BLOODFOOT" or: my day at the doctor's!

So, among the many reasons I haven't been blogging lately (among them, a job hunt, an apartment hunt, and working very hard on this), I've been feeling a bit sick these days. It started about 2.5 weeks ago with a bad sore throat. Then my ears started hurting, then my throat took over again. I started to worry, because my awesome life requires that I sing and shout a lot. So I made myself a doctor's appointment for this morning.

And at a doctor's office only two blocks from my residence, no less! So I took off on my ninety-second walk, wearing my new flip flops (this kind, not this kind). And since I don't really know how to walk (especially in flip flops), I took a nice cross-section of my big toe about one minute into my walk, using the sidewalk as my scalpel. I didn't notice how bad it was until I was filling out some forms in the doctor's office about two minutes later. Turns out my foot was soaking in blood! "Good thing I'm already at a doctor's office!" thought I. I chuckled to myself and voiced this revelation aloud to the disgusted people in the waiting room who were sitting nearby.

The strangest thing about this ever-twisting medical tale is that this was the second time in three days that I managed to coax large amounts of blood from my right foot! Just this Tuesday, I was cooking in my ladyfriend's kitchen, when a wineglass broke in the dishwasher. Glass shrapnel flew all over the kitchen, and though we managed to clean up the mess in a manner of minutes, a few stray shards remained hidden in the floor cracks. And as I was chopping up a nice watermelon, a narrow 3/4" piece of glass found a new home in the sole of my foot. My first-ever puncture wound! I bled all over the floor, and wondered when I had last received a tetanus shot.

"When was your last tetanus shot?" asked the disgusted medical assistant, staring at my red foot. "I can't remember," I replied. "It's been a while... Though, I'm actually here because I have a sore throat." The medical assistant stared at me and blinked. I added, "I guess I should get this checked out, too." She nodded and gave me a tuft of gauze. I sat down and made an attempt to elevate my foot above heart level, unaware that there was still one twist left in the tale of Bloodfoot.

Dr. Fitzpatrick, or "Fitz," as some of the other patients called him, came to see me about 15 minutes later. I told him about my throat and toe. Fitz told me that maybe I shouldn't walk in sandals if I don't know how to walk in sandals. It hurt a little to hear this, but I knew inside that Fitz was probably right, being a doctor. Fitz asked me about tetanus. I said I didn't know. He ordered me a shot.

As the probably-Irish doctor went to work on cleaning my bloody, bloody foot with a big brown bottle of peroxide, I mentioned the puncture wound. And here's that last twist. He turned my foot around to examine the sole and took a look. And then he said, "Oh, you mean this?" and pointed at a third and previously undiscovered gash on my foot! Which was currently bleeding! I looked at him wide-eyed and replied, "Um, no. The puncture wound is here," pointing at a smaller red dot on the other end of my foot. "I actually... have... no idea what that is." Fitz looked at me and shook his big head. Then he looked in my throat and told me I had strep.

Moral: If you make three large cuts on the same foot in one week and you can't remember your last tetanus shot, you probably have strep throat.

The End!