FIRST ATHLETIC INJURY

There’s nothing more pathetic than old people doing an organ recital: my ouji hurts, my falapagus aches, my glutiglopilus is inflamed. Yuck! That’s why it’s with great reluctance and self-conscious rectitude, I describe my first athletic injury.

This is my (drum roll) first athletic injury since starting my two- to four-mile-a-day walking habit. Yes, an athletic injury—no scoffing, please. Since I only go to the doctor every five years (where the doctor tells me I am just fine and have the blood pressure of a teenager), my athletic injury is self-diagnosed. But I’m 100 percent sure of my diagnosis, courtesy of www.mayoclinic.com.

The Mayo Clinic website describes the sensation as a “sharp pain in the inside part of the bottom of your heel, which may feel like a knife sticking in the bottom of your foot,” otherwise known as plantar fasciitis. It’s been coming on gradually for a couple of months; but it hurts the worst when I first get out of bed in the morning, when I’ve been standing for awhile, or when I get up after I’ve been sitting. So it seemed more like a condition that hurt when I wasn’t walking, rather than when I was. But on Wednesday, when I got out of bed, it was more like a Bora Bora machete was sticking in the bottom of my foot than Mayo Clinic’s knife analogy.

So I’m doing all the self-treatment exercises (cold packs, towel stretches, calf stretches). And I even went so far as to crawl into the back of my closet and resurrect a pair of black EasySpirit oxford/tennis shoes that I had bought for some trip or other and wore only twice.

UGLY SHOES

They are easily the most comfortable pair of shoes I have ever owned; but even for a non-vain person, they are also easily the ugliest shoes I have ever owned. However, because I wanted to get better, I put those ugly shoes on and wore them to work yesterday. And today. And I didn’t walk 2-to-4 Wednesday, or yesterday, or today. (I can feel the mental illness creeping in already.)

So tomorrow morning, bright and early, I expect to be cured. I’ve iced, I’ve stretched, I’ve worn the ugly shoes. I expect to rise from my bed a cured woman. I’m not much of an athlete; three days should be enough to cure me of my not-much-of-an-athlete injury. If I need to, I'll even walk my 2-to-4 wearing the ugly shoes.