A big bucket of sexy, that's what I am

Several years ago, I fell up the stairs in my house. It was a fairly dramatic fall and I sustained an injury to the big toe on my left foot. When it didn't get better after a few weeks, I went to a doctor. He told me it was fine and that I could do physical therapy at home by picking up coins with my toes (while I watched television). I translated his advice to: "You should go away now."  So, I didn't pursue any further action.

In case you are keeping a tally:

Medical-type person (encountered after moving to current city)	How I feel about them
Doctor who didn’t care about my toe	Mild dislike
First dermatologist who cared more about selling cosmetic surgery than helping with legitimate medical issue	Dislike
Second dermatologist who’s totally old-school but nice as can be	Adore
First OB-GYN, who refused to give me an ultrasound in my first trimester when I told him something was wrong	Full-on hatred
Optometrist	Like a lot, except that one time when he dilated my pupils
Second OB-GYN, who done me wrong in every possible way	Hatred to the point where I gave serious consideration to mowing her down with my van when I saw her walking across the Best Buy parking lot that one time.
Orthopedist who put my broken thumb back together	Adore.  Also, he is kind of cute.
Dentist	Like, but don’t adore because, well, hanging out with him is not that fun.
Third (and current) OB-GYN	Moderate dislike.  He’s better than the first two, but there’s a certain smugness about him that chaps my ass.

I have a new doctor to add to my list, which is my podiatrist (and I dig him so far). I saw him for the first time yesterday. I feel like an old lady just by virtue of the fact that I now *have* a podiatrist. The title conjures images of corns and bunions and whatnot.  Anyway, I made the appointment because my foot hurts.  After the initial injury, I didn't think about my foot constantly. In fact, in the years that followed, I couldn't always remember which foot I'd injured until I had some need to crouch down or otherwise bend my feet - and then I remembered.  Now, however, my foot has made it clear that I need to pay attention to it like it's my full-time job. It hurts when I walk and when I go to yoga. Sometimes, when I am sitting at my desk at work, pain shoots through my toe for no reason at all. I finally decided it was time to see if anything could be done.

So, off I went. The new guy took x-rays and then reviewed them with me. Here is the scoop: my original injury left me with a jacked-up joint (I tried looking up the name of the actual joint but let me just say that it's the joint that connects my big toe to the rest of my foot - and leave it at that). I have a bone spur that is jabbing me every time I flex the foot. Oh, and here's the sexy part . . . arthritis.  I have arthritis in my foot. Ah, aging - it's the gift that keeps on giving, my friends.

The doctor laid out a few options, starting with the most conservative - an oral anti-inflammatory.  The next step up is to give me a cortisone injection. The final frontier is surgery - he would slice open my foot, saw off the bone fragment, and then sew me back up again.

I thought he was going to push me to start with the oral stuff first ("that's what she said!") but he asked how I wanted to proceed.  Since this is an old injury, I don't think anything I put in my mouth is going to make a difference. "I want the shot," I said.

So, I got the shot. He told me straight out that it would hurt, and it hurt like a sonofabitch. For some reason I thought of that scene from "The 40-Year-Old-Virgin" where Steve Carrell gets his chest waxed and screams, "KELLY CLARKSON!" every time they pull off a wax strip. Seriously, my vision blurred for a second when that needle hit.

So now I guess I just wait and see.  It sounds like I will probably need the surgery eventually, but I plan to hold out as long as I can.

There you have it - the latest in my march towards old-ladydom.