A hole in my foot

It’s February 1994 and I’m in Paris.

We’re visiting Retromobile - the biggest classic car show in Paris.

At the time I’m 20 years old.

Long hair.

A love of rock music and a feeling of immortality.

We spent the Saturday walking around the show checking out the huge range of classic cars, and on the evening we enjoy the inside of a French restaurant.

Great food, with awesome company and plenty of beer.

About 1am I decide I am going for a walk.

It’s not too cold and I walk for miles, taking in the sites of Paris at night.

The Arc de Triomphe and the Champs Elyssee.

The Moulin Rouge and a trip back to the hotel with a Gendarme.

(I was lost)

The next morning I get up with a thick head and we take the journey back to England.

Two days later and my left foot starts to hurt. A small amount of pain to begin, which progress quickly to a huge amount of pain. I could hardly put it down to the ground.

Barefoot, hobbling around my mom’s kitchen, I try to balance on one leg, moving with the grace of a 6 foot hairy ballerina who has never ever studied ballet.

The kitchen is not that big, and being so tall, I can use the kitchen units as a kind of inbuilt walking frame.

I slip, loosing balance and reaching out with my left leg to stop myself from falling.

My left foot hits the ground hard.

First there is pain.

Then a pop.

Finally relief.

The pain is gone, but there’s now a hole in my foot and what was covering the hole, is now in part spread across some of my mom’s kitchen cupboards.

I didn’t know it at the time, but this was my first foot ulcer.

I have a hole in my foot - what the hell do I do?

Thinking back on this, it’s hard to remember precisely what I did next.

My mom dressed the wound, using skills from her nursing days.

I don’t remember panicking. I don’t remember worry.

In fact, I think there was some ambivalence.

I was studying computing at the time - healthcare wasn’t even close to being on my radar - and I had no idea of the implications of this.

What happened next was out of my control. I was a passenger.

I remember visiting the nurse at our local doctors surgery. Margaret was her name - an old school, no nonsense lady, but with an absolutely huge heart.

A professional from another era, she started the process of dressing the ulcer, using a scalpel blade to remove the bits of hard skin that formed around it.

I saw her frequently for a few weeks, and then she said “this is outside of my scope of practice - I need to refer you to see a podiatrist”.

“What’s a podiatrist?” I said.

And that was the first time I came across a podiatrist, and the impact started to become clear.

Walking around Paris I felt immortal - now I realised that I wasn’t.

It took over a year for the ulcer to heal.

If you’ve not been involved in the process, treating an ulcer is like groundhog day, but without furry rodents and true love at the end.

Daily dressings to protect from infection.

Sticky padding to relieve pressure.

Avoidance of water for extended periods of time.

Regular appointments for debridement of hard skin and reviews.

I’m grateful that my foot healed, and that I no longer have a hole in my foot, because it could have been much worse.

I was scared, but at the same time, I was curious.

We’re do the limits lie?

What if it ulcerated again?

What is that place between ulcer and no ulcer?

I realise now, that I have a relationship with my ulceration that I can only term as schizophrenic.

Logic vs emotion.

Logic says be careful.

Emotion asks - are you sure you’re not immortal…

A constant flip-flopping between those two states, with a realisation that this isn’t just about the hole I once had in my foot, it’s about a deeper part of me.

One that is constantly being explored.