Not For the Faint of Heart!

Some years ago, I noticed that many of my shoes really didn't feel good anymore. After returning from West Virginia, I decided to have the doctor check out the strange, hard, enlarged area on top of my big toe joint. It wasn't long until he decided to fix it. His preferred method of treatment included scraping off extra bone pieces and then inserting 4 pins attached to a special expanding rail to spread the joint apart a bit in hopes it would heal that way.



The doctor made sure he got the correct foot by writing on it with his special purple marker. It kind of went with the color scheme of the bruising, don't you think?



Sadly, when all was healed, the extra space all disappeared and I was back to square one. By then it was time for summer! I told the doctor I'd see him in the fall. Summer was too busy visiting family, gardening, harvesting, canning, and doing school groups at 'the farm'. After school groups ended in late October, the doctor tried again. This time, the plan was to remove some of the bone to make the needed space. It only required 1 pin in it. (You can see the end of it there at the tip of my toe.) Hopefully this time it will heal in a more usable way!