Walking on Air Isn't All It's Cracked Up to Be

Way (way, way) back in the day, my parents were big on extracurricular activities. Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, Indian Guides -- my elder siblings did it all, with some seriously active participation from Mum and Dad. And as one of the younger siblings, I got to come along for the ride -- and goof around with the toys that were made for the bigger kids.

One of the things I remember is my Dad making these funky shoes out of spare lumber and rope. Some were like flip-flops built for five or six kids to march together like a caterpillar, but some were just like very short stilts.* 

I've been thinking a lot about those shoes lately. Pretty much every time I take a step. The way my feet work these days has a lot in common with how your feet work when you're a small child playing around with funky homemade too large wooded shoes strapped to your feet. Specifically...

I can no longer feel the ground under my feet as I walk. It's like there's two inches of inflatable cushion between my feet and the ground -- a wobbly, unstable, under-inflated cushion.

Though I can't really feel my heels anymore, it seems like all the nerve endings in my heels have moved to my toes. At this point, I'm never not aware of my toes which, at best are kind of tingly, but at worst are really painful.

Socks create a new challenge in that the sensation of wearing socks now has a lot in common with standing barefoot on that plastic fake grass or really cheap indoor/outdoor carpeting. Being barefoot is no alternative, as allowing my feet to get even marginally cool causes real problems. Slippers are okay, but there are only so many places you can legitimately wear sheepskin slippers.

The problems, moreover, aren't limited to my feet. As a result of the problems in my feet, I now walk like I'm doing a bad imitation of Oswald Cobblepot on Gotham. After forty-some years of walking in one particular way, my bones and muscles have gotten used to the established pattern. My weird hobbling is not making them happy. I've got weird pains and stiffness running up and down my legs, and my back is starting to scream. (Here's hoping it's not another tumor.)

And to think all this isn't the result of the cancer, but rather the cancer treatment. 

Ain't modern medicine grand?

* In truth, some of these devices were probably just a bit of poorly thought out cultural appropriation, but I doubt cultural appropriation was much of a concern for an organization known as the Indian Guides. And this was the seventies, after all.