My Stupid Feet

Anonymous asked: I'm wondering how you're doing now. I got frostbite in February--although I don't think mine was as bad as yours (no black toes, just purple/red ones). Are your nerves hypersensitive to changes in temperature? I even started sandals this summer (that was a huge moment!)--and was in for a rude surprise yesterday when the temperature suddenly dropped to 55, and caused my symptoms to flare up again. Anyway, your blog was an inspiration to me. I wish I had stayed in such good spirits and humor.

Thank you for the question, I had no idea that anyone would still be checking in to my little old blog. Believe it or not, it’s seven months later and I still have sores at the end of my big toes. They’re almost healed up, but it’s mind-boggling to me that I can still have unhealed wounds from over half a year ago.

As for my sensitivity to temperature change, my feet do feel A LOT colder when there’s the slightest bit of draft. I’ve had to wear socks to bed some nights just to prevent potential icy feet. Apparently this is normal and it will take a couple of years for this sensitivity to pass, but it does eventually get better.

Anyway, thank you for your kind words, and I’m glad I could be a bit of an inspiration. All the best to you!

Anonymous asked: Hows the feet right meow?

Right meow? RIGHT MEOW?????

I love you.

I am so terribly sorry to everyone who has been following me. My life has picked up recently, and my feet have been relatively unchanged. I have picked myself off that futon in my parents’ place, and am now three weeks deep into my placement. What is my placement you ask? For five weeks I’m teaching art to high school students in Terrace Bay, and I am so damn into it. Teaching this age group is intensely satisfying for me, although it could be fairly draining at times. To say the least, I’m having a blast.

Anyway, that’s where I’m at right now, but before we jump to the present, I have a story to tell. This picture of my friend Will should speak volumes about this post.

This picture was taken on April 25th - about two months after that whole incident; you know, the one with the skis and the cold, and the scary, THAT one. Anyway, April 25th was an exceptionally beautiful day considering we’re on the north shore of Lake Superior, brrrr. At this time its usually either below 10 degrees or pouring rain, but on this day, the gods were on our side. For what? An outdoor adventure, starring Will and myself.

Before I begin, I really must catch you all up on my mobility: I’ve ditched the wheelchair in favour of crutches. The crutches kinda sucked, but I put up with them. That is until Will texted me from the Salvation Army asking me if I needed a cane. At first, I thought what good is a cane? It doesn’t really relieve any pressure like crutches do, and it’s only good for one side of the body. I replied with a straight and simple “Nah”, but I changed my answer once he texted back “But this one has a bell”. That was enough to intrigue me, so he picked it up. When I dropped by to see it, this is what I saw:

BAM! Not only does it have a bicycle bell, it can also carry a beer bottle. Wow. Just, wow! I love the crotchety old man pimped this cane like Xzibit. Definitely the coolest man ever to shamble across this mortal coil. Without hesitation, this cane became my mobility assistant of choice. I can’t tell you how much my street cred has gone up.

Also, instead of those old, puffy winter slipper-type things that I wore outside and may or may not have written about; I’ve moved on to moccasins. They’re way more comfortable, and not nearly as ridiculous looking. Because I obviously don’t want to look ridiculous as I stroll around town in my slippers with my beer-carrying, bell-cane; that would be silly. Since Will and I were about to have an outdoor adventure, I needed to do something about my moccasins. There was no way I could negotiate any sort of trail in them, so I found a big pair of winter boots, removed the lining, and did this:

I just put my goddamn moccasins in the goddamn boots; it was that simple. Once I had done this, I felt superawesome. To be more descriptive, I felt like Ripley at the end of Aliens when she climbs into that giant mechanical robot body to fight that last queen alien and blast her into space. That’s exactly how I felt. It’s uncanny how similar my situation was to that movie scene, strange. So, now I have some boots on, and I can conquer the world - I was ready for the adventure, the quest, operation ski retrieval!

Here’s the old trail map again, for reference. I’ve marked where we parked, our hike in, and our destination (all in pink). I really feel like I need to emphasize the point that this map makes the trail seem much more sterile than it actually is. We still had to conquer flooded creeks, crunchy snow, and at one point I mistook the trail for a waterfall - seriously. So I’ll be the first to admit, considering my condition at the time, this probably wasn’t the best idea. But, that’s how I do. Anyway, our journey began with us traipsing down an old set of train tracks.

With all those railway ties jutting out of the ground, it wasn’t easy to get a walking rhythm going on, especially when your only mode of transportation is “old man hobble”. Anyway, after about 20 minutes of that, we hit the trail and things were good; the snow was minimal, sun was shining, and the forest was fragrant. It was really strange to be on the trail again, and having memories of that night bubble up. Seeing trail signs, bridges, weird trees, almost anything unique brought back a little jolt of recognition or memory. Maybe it’s just me, but visual cues usually bring about an emotional memory. What happens is, I just recall how I felt at the time I first saw that thing, or how I felt at the time that it made its deepest impression on me. For instance, I would see a particular sign, and would instantly flash back to me on the back of a snowmobile, feeling a huge amount of relief, but having concern claw at me. I was concerned for the girls being physically and mentally alright, Sheekuan, thinking what a silly situation I was in. I felt the wind cold on my face, stinging my chapped lips and my rubbery nose. My feet were totally numb, but I didn’t think it would be anything major because the rest of my body was warm.  Anyway, I enjoy the hectic re-experiencing of emotions, it’s like I get to relive a part of my life, but from the viewpoint of an observer.

Hey look! It’s a bridge! This is near the beginning of our journey, and sadly I don’t have pictures further than this. So, you’re just going to have to believe me that the trail got rougher than this. since there were some trees around (I think you can see some in that picture), they blocked the sun from melting the snow on the inner trail. The snow that did melt made the trail more than a bit soggy at points. Leapfrogging over gigantic puddles with weird numb feet isn’t the most fun thing ever. And no, I wasn’t exaggerating about a part of the trail looking like a waterfall. It wasn’t a real gusher or anything, but think of a little babbling brook, something you’d find in a nice little fairytale or something. Now take that babbling brook and put it at a 60 degree angle, THAT was a part of the trail. Needless to say, we sidestepped that portion.

The weirdest thing is that when the ground became more covered by snow, we started seeing a set of footprints. Actually, that’s not weird at all, of course we’d see footprints once there was snow. We were just confused as to why some crazy was walking on this forsaken trail; I mean, we had a purpose, what drive did this person have? After about an hour of trail we started to ascend Eagle Ridge. My excitement was indescribable, picture you standing in line about to experience your first petting zoo. Staring at all those obese ponies, llamas, emus, bears, goats, etc. just vibrating with excitement to touch some fluffy cute fat things. That was me as I hobbled through the dangerous terrain. I wanted to touch those skis again, and I was so close to that reality. Finally, it was time for my anticipation to be quenched.

So, I lied about not having any more pictures. Whatever. Here are my favourite stairs in the world! I never noticed this before, but there’s a sign with an arrow indicating which direction to go in. As if someone were to ponder “I’m not sure about taking those behemoth stairs, I don’t know if they’re part of the trail or not - you know, someone could have built them as a decoration or something. Oh, a sign? With an arrow? I guess I won’tstruggle through this unmanicured wilderness, and take the stairs if that’s what the sign says to do. Thank you arrow sign!” I love Northern Ontario.

Oh yes, the skis! So here we are, finally, the stairs to Eagle Ridge, but… where… are… the skis?

So, yeah. No skis at the top. We poked around for a while, maybe they fell down and got covered with snow… maybe. Of course, our searching was all in vain - it became dreadfully apparent that those footprints belonged to the person who made off with our skis. I was pretty furious at this point; why on earth would somebody go so far for three pairs of skis? I guess they could fetch you a couple hundred dollars, but is it really worth the soul-wrenching guilt? To some people, I suppose it is. We descended, hopped and hobbled down the path, and back to the car. There was a hefty air of defeat during our drive - awkward silence and spasmodic conversation were the only two activities to partake in.

Luckily, we don’t live in a world filled with foul criminals. A few days later I received a phone call from the Nipigon OPP claiming that they had our skis. Apparently, the most admirable man in the world - Jim McCullough - took a morning, hiked all the way up there, and lugged three sets of skis and two sets of poles all the way to civilization. That man went so far out of his way for a reason that would not benefit him at all. What a superstar. The world would surely be a better place if more folks took a page from Jim’s book of selflessness. Thank you Jim, you are the best around!

Anonymous asked: Update?

Sorry that it’s been a while, on top of me sorting out school, I’m also in the process of moving. I have an update bubbling in my mind, though.

Soon enough!

Anonymous asked: Not really looking for any answer... Think you either moved there from florida or your are a plain stupid.
Like you felt nothing coming your way.

Nailed it! I’m am a plain stupid.

Thanks for your question string of incoherent, unrelated sentences!

Anonymous asked: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6pDeTKoa-4

Relevant

The link in question.

If you ever see me, please don’t do this to me.

Anonymous asked: So why did your feet get so much more frosty damage than the two women's? What would have happened if you wore more socks? Did you ever tell the constable that he was an idiot?

Well, Erika was the smart one of the gang and she wore gaiters. Haley and I didn’t, so we both had snow entering our boots where it melted, froze, and melted over and over. This stressed our little feet out, and caused our frostbite. Why is mine worse? The only reasons I can think of are because I broke a lot of the trail, and don’t have the best circulation.

I’m not sure if I would have been better with more socks, but I do know that I would have rather had synthetic socks rather than cotton.

As for my favourite constable, we never really got a chance to confront him. Our only personal contact with him was about 30 minutes after we had been admitted to the hospital. He made a visit to the three of us to pat himself on the back. First, to Haley who was in morphine-land, then to me, where I was fading out of consciousness, and finally Erika, who was pretty shell shocked to say the least. All in all, challenging this guy wasn’t any of our top priorities at those moments, or is now. I can probably speak for the three of us by saying that we have more important and interesting things to occupy our time with.

Thanks for asking, and thanks for your interest!

So, I’m just going to stop posting that gremlin picture. As a worldly, educated connoisseur of the internet, I’m sure you know what horrors you’re getting your eyeballs into. To your chagrin, the title of this article is actually a description of what my feet have morphed into. To be truthful, this stage of frostbite has actually grossed me out the most. More than when my feet were bizarre blister sacks, and even more than when they were zombified. There’s something deeply disturbing about having blackened crispy bits as your toes - I knew the blisters were temporary, but this looks like it’s for eternity.

This is the picture with the least amount of crispy gore, just to give you, dear reader a sense of what I usually see. If you’ll notice the rest of my foot, besides being all red and puffy, it has some great new skin taking over from where it had been formerly disgusting. For some reason, this new skin reminds me of these dudes:

I don’t know, it’s probably because they’re relatively the same size, and colour. It’s definitely not because they’re soft and squirmy - I have little mobility in my toes, and because they’re swollen they’re as firm as baseballs. To be truthful, I’d trade in my current blackened toes to have those guys at the end of my feet; I’m getting a little tired of being sickened by the sight of my feet. Anyway, to finish up, here are a couple more pictures:

I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but I don’t feel this. What might look like agony to you, doesn’t even register on my pain-radar. What I do feel is a little bit of tingling, sometimes a little zing, and a bit of a dull aching. I know there is a lot of “Oh my Gawd!” reactions, but there isn’t much pain at all. The most interesting part of these pictures is that underneath those weirdo leopard print-type areas is that awesome baby mouse skin. When it’s ready, it’ll just peel off like some sort of fruit roll-up… or something. Now, I’m hoping that’s what will be the case with these black parts.

Anonymous asked: I laughed, and laughed, and got pretty grossed out but mostly I laughed! I truly admire your positivity and brilliant sense of humor in the face of the awful physical trauma you're recovering from. I'll be hoping for a speedy and full recovery for you, please PLEASE take good care of yourself, and if you can, keep writing. :) Much love and best wishes!
~Christine


~Christine

~Christine

Thank you, Christine Christine Christine. As for my recovery, all the ugly bits are leaving my feet,  but it will still be a while before I can walk normally. In the meantime, I’ll be sure to keep writing - the response has been fantastic!

Anonymous asked: Dude!

I just wanted to say thanks so much for documenting your fascinating story. Also, your positive outlook, humor and sincerity are outstanding. Best of luck to you on your recovery.

Thanks for your support! My life isn’t terrible by any means, so I can look upon this incident fairly humourously. I’m starting to do regular people things (like wearing socks), so my outlook is getting better by the day. Thank you again, and all the best!