the squibix family blog

Over the next two weeks either the pain got worse and worse or my tolerance to it did; I turned overnight into a very crabby person with severe fed-up-ness and absolutely no sense of humor. I experienced constant pain, and I know people throw around that phrase a lot, constant pain, but when you're really in constant pain it's like cooooooonnnnnnssssstttttaaaaannnnnnntttttttt paaaaaaaain. Like, it f-ing hurts all the time people. Constant means all the time. Also, my job made the pain considerably worse, since my job consists entirely of standing and walking, which were precisely the two states of weight-bearing contraindicated by my doctor. I wondered each moment whether keeping my job was doing irrevocable damage to my foot, whether I would never be able to run again, whether I should quit my job and starve with no health insurance for the sake of my future foot health and not being in coooooonnnnnnnnnnnnssssssstttttttaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnntttttt pain. It is the kind of decision that you imagine poor people have to make: my health versus a very small source of income. You never know how poverty really sucks until you have to choose between your health and your health insurance plan. While I knew I was poor, I never imagined I was THAT poor. Until last week. Last week I realized that we're wicked poor.

Anyhoo, I was working, in excruciating pain, and while my stress level shot up like the Dow I was not able to exercise, the one thing in the universe that makes me feel not like a worthless bag of human waste. Whenever anyone tried to help by saying something like, ìWhy donít you try swimming?î I would yell something like, ìBecause I donít belong to a gym with a pool because that costs like EIGHTY FUCKING DOLLARS A MONTH, THATíS WHY!!!!î Even though youíre in cooonstant pain, if you start yelling at people you will be surprised how soon they stop giving a shit.

Today someone in the medical profession actually spoke to me (as opposed to the week I spent yelling at secretaries and answering services), and contrary to my first Doctorís opinion (ìJust keep of itÖ youíll be fine!î), this doctor told me that my foot would never heal with my current level of activity and gave me an air-cast. I should note that this doctor is not a doctor with whom I effectively MADE AN APPOINTMENT, because all doctors cannot see newly injured people me until after THEY COMPLETELY HEAL OR DIE FROM LACK OF ADEQUATE PAINKILLERS. All the referrals I called were booking into the New Year. No, this doctor was a gentleman I know through my professional pursuits, and he traded me his advice and an air-cast only after I buttered him up with free product. Just so you guys know, the Hippocratic Oath currently only functions as a game in which purple African animals race for small white marbles.

So the air cast has actually taken some of the pain out of walking, and this evening I was able to actually have a nice outing with my husband without attempting to claw his eyes out of their sockets. Itís either the benefit of the air-cast, or the fact that I mixed my pain medication with alcohol when it specifically says DO NOT MIX WITH ALCOHOL on the label.

Hopefully my foot will start to get better from now on. In the meantime, I have learned something I thought I knew before but I guess my naiveté prevented me from believing: As a poor young person I am very very insignificant in this world. My bosses donít care if Iím doubled over with foot spasms; they canít even muster the breath to ask if Iím okay. My doctorís only desire is that I stop calling her office. Even my friends and family are a little fed up if the complaint doesnít involve plentiful punchlines. Lotís of people work through pain; thatís why the Catholics say that life is suffering. I had thought that before, that life was suffering, but I didnít really have an idea what they MEANT by suffering. I know that many people suffer much worse, but when standing on your foot pushes cracks deeper into the bone because you have to work a scheduled twelve hours and if you donít then you canít pay the five thousand dollars it will cost when you go to the hospital and you no longer have insuranceÖ that should pretty much put me on the suffering scale somewhere between Mexican and Jewish.

Hopefully this story will have a happy ending in which the air cast will help my foot heal faster and I wonít get too tremendously fat in the interim. Also hopefully I will get to quit my job soon and finish school full time and start a different job where if they donít care if I live or die, at least theyíll pay me over 50K. Either way I hope that my complete lack of faith in humanity will be replaced with some reclamation of dignity coupled with mild disdain for other people. But working in retail isnít really the best place for that.

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