The Great Floridian Expedition

Well, I'm back from Florida.

Yes, Florida! After scarcely leaving the house for the last three years, I decided to go all out and travel to the opposite side of the country and risk all kinds of complications. Why? Because my one of my former college roommates (and favorite people on the planet) was getting married and of all the things I've missed since the migraines became a full-time disability (several weddings, my grandfather's funeral, trips to Europe and to visit family in California), this was the one I hated to miss the most. So my mother asked me, "What would it take for you to be able to go?"

It's absolutely crucial that I get a lot of sleep and if I don't sleep well, I can't just go on with my day anyway. And I can't deviate from my sleep schedule without consequences. Not only is there a three hour time difference between the West and East Coasts, but the wedding was scheduled to start four hours before I normally woke up. There was no way I could just show up in Florida, power through a couple days of getting up early to reset my clock and then be fine. I knew one of the most important things I would need to do was to shift my sleep schedule over to being in line with Eastern Time. So over the course of two months, I took my nighttime medicine half an hour earlier each week. That meant that in the weeks just before the trip I barely saw my parents at all because I was going to bed right when they came home from work, but it was a huge success in terms of being able to adjust to the three hour time difference without wreaking havoc on my migraines.

Food was another important factor. Florida is a lousy place in general to be a vegetarian and the area where the wedding was taking place, in the rural Panhandle area, was even worse. Eating out is also stressful for me because noise and other stimulation, while deciding where to eat, especially when already hungry or tired, is hard for me even when well. So I packed a lot of food that I could eat in the hotel room. For breakfast I had my usual dry cereal, dried fruit, and nuts. For dinners I packed instant soup cups that I could make by heating water in the hotel coffee maker. When we got to Florida, I supplemented the food I packed with applesauce cups, Triscuits, and grapes. It worked out well to have filling, nutritious food at my disposal so that I didn't have to wake up in time to ponder the items offered by the hotel's complimentary continental breakfast (not likely to be very appetizing) and at the end of the day, when tired, I didn't have to worry about dinner because I knew I had a couscous lentil soup cup that could be ready in five minutes. (My father, meanwhile, got to enjoy some genuine Southern barbecue and local seafood restaurants.) Having sufficient sleep and sufficient food made functioning possible.

Taking my father along was also an important part of the plan. There was no way I could have done all that driving and maneuvering of suitcases (especially since I started out the trip on crutches!) and his presence spared me the necessity of taking care of the mundane details of travel, like checking in and out of the hotels. We had separate rooms so I wouldn't have to contend with his snoring and he wouldn't have to tiptoe around my sleep schedule. His presence made things much easier.

In addition to modifying my sleep schedule, I had worked to build up my physical and social stamina during the months before the wedding. I also purchased several new, cute summer tops (my summer wardrobe had not been updated for several years and a number of my tops were worn out or didn't fit well anymore) and found a clutch I could take to the wedding that I'd be able to fit a pair of sandals inside so I could take off my heels. I covered all the bases I could think of, including scheduling in days for resting during the trip, but there was one big question mark that remained: how I would respond to air travel.

Red stars mark stops during the trip.

We were concerned because I am so sensitive to pressure changes and while they pressurize the cabins of airplanes, there's still enough change on takeoff and landing that your ears pop. It was possible that a flight would be agonizing and here I was, proposing to fly across the country. We decided that a direct flight would be the best way to cope, since it would require only one takeoff and landing, rather than two. The only non-stop flight between Seattle and anywhere in Florida flies into Orlando. The wedding was taking place outside Tallahassee, nearly three hundred miles (and five hours of driving) from Orlando, but we concluded that it was better to drive than have to transfer planes in Texas. We also scheduled a day of total rest following our arrival in Orlando and I prepped for the flight with multiple migraine medications, muscle relaxants, a travel pillow, two different types of earplugs, an eye mask, a iPod loaded with classical cello solos, and easy-to-eat-even-when-queasy snacks, but it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I boarded the plane. So I doped myself up and off we went. The headaches didn't end up being too bad (I think my preventative medication approach really helped), but on flight to Florida I endured some pretty agonizing muscle pain. I'm so thankful I had muscle relaxants to take! The cello music helped, too, because it gave me something to focus on besides the pain. But the five and a half hours did pass, and after I'd taken a very long hot shower upon arriving in Orlando, I was actually okay.

The paradox that is Florida: gorgeous nature and
ugly development

And so there I was in Florida. This was not the first time I found myself in that state. I spent four years attending (and then graduated from) the excellent New College of Florida in Sarasota. My opinion of Florida, formed during my college visit in October of 1998, was that it was one weird state and that opinion never changed. It was the polar opposite of Seattle's brooding landscape of hills and mountains, dark green forests, gray skies, cool temperatures, and dark blue waters. Florida, and especially the southern Gulf Coast around Sarasota, seemed like a land designed and colored by Disney: turquoise water, white sand, pink stucco, palmetto greens, and blue skies with perky, puffy white clouds. Oh, and it was almost comically flat. That goofy, cheerful landscape had a dark underside to it, one of high humidity, zillions of insects, the sharp contrast between the wealthy retirees and impoverished black populations, a desperate lack of decent bread, an alarming number of sex shops and rent-by-the-hour motels, and a general swampy atmosphere of accelerated decay. There were things I loved about Florida--the alligators, the sunsets, my school, the beaches--but I was not the least bit sorry to leave it. Upon arriving in Orlando, I found myself surrounded by Florida's most depressing landscape: mile after flat, desolate mile of strip malls and chain stores, a soul-sucking vision of America at its ugliest. It reinforced my feeling that Florida was a place best left behind.

On the road in the Sunshine State.

Fortunately, after my day of rest following the flight, we hit the road headed toward points north and the scene of many fond memories. During three of my four years in Florida, I dated a native of Gainesville and his wonderful family had always welcomed me into their home with open arms. It meant a lot to me to have this surrogate family to spend breaks and Thanksgiving holidays with when my own family was 3000 miles away. I've remained in touch even after my boyfriend and I parted ways at graduation, so I'd arranged to have lunch with his mother when we passed through Gainesville on our way north. It was lovely to see her again and sit down at the table of the house that I knew so well and remembered so fondly, but the best part of the day was yet to come. My former boyfriend and I had remained very good friends and I was overjoyed when he and my first-year roommate fell in love after graduation--she was a much better match for him than I was! I had the honor of attending their wedding and now I had an opportunity to be present to celebrate another milestone: welcoming their first child!

My friend holding his new baby.

The baby hadn't been in any hurry to make his debut and things had reached the point that his mother was scheduled to have labor induced the day I was passing through Gainesville. Fortunately, he decided it was time to come out on his own and was born the day before the deadline! I was planning on visiting my friends and their new baby on my way back through Gainesville after the wedding, but was delighted (and honored) to learn that they wanted me to come visit them at the hospital! So that is how I found myself on the maternity floor of the UF hospital, cradling the 28-hour-old son of some of my dearest friends in my arms. I've always been intimidated by babies and babies, sensing my discomfort, have always squalled in alarm when placed in my arms, but holding this brand new infant was different experience. He really was amazing, so tiny and warm and vulnerable and alive! Fortunately, he's proved to be a very mellow baby, still spending most of his time sleeping, so he made no protest when he was transferred into my arms, allowing me to marvel at his newness without fear of discomforting him. I've hear people rave about baby feet and toes and hands and now I know why: they are astonishing in how perfectly formed they are, complete with all the creases at the joints and those amazing tiny nails! It was also so special to see my former boyfriend transformed into a father as he held his infant son in his arms! I felt so honored to be invited to share these early moments with them as a family and was really blown away by the experience of meeting a newborn in the flesh! I was feeling much more inclined to view the state of Florida in a positive light when my father and I once again got under way, heading toward the Panhandle.

On the backroads of the Florida Panhandle.

During my college years, I went to Gainesville regularly and visited both Cedar Key (on the Gulf Coast) and St. Augustine (on the Atlantic) several times, stopped off at Dino World in Plant City and had dinner in Orlando on a day-trip, went down to the Everglades on two occasions, and flew in and out of Tampa whenever I went home, but I'd never been to the Florida Panhandle. I knew very little about it, other than that it was considered part of the Deep South (there's the saying that "The farther south you go in Florida, the further north you get"), that many of Bailey White's stories take place nearby, and the highest point in Florida, a laughable 345 ft about sea level, is located in the region. (Did you know that the highest non-nautral point in Florida is the roof of the Four Seasons Hotel Miami, at 789 ft?) I was therefore rather unprepared for how beautiful it was as we left Tallahassee behind us and turned south toward the Gulf, heading toward Wakulla Springs.

The spring-fed Wakulla River

I HAD heard of Wakulla Springs before. Many years ago, while watching TV in the hotel room during a long car trip, my family had viewed a program about the spring, one of the largest and deepest in the world. Divers have found plenty of bones of prehistoric animals in its depths, but the network of underwater caves is so vast (12 miles have been mapped and surveyed so far), that it has yet to be explored in its entirety. I found the program fascinating enough that I've remembered it after all these years and recognized it as the spring in Bailey White's piece "Large and Deep" from Sleeping at the Starlite Motel. I was pleased, therefore, to get a chance to visit in person a place that I'd heard about.

It had been late enough when we finally checked into our hotel in Crawfordville that we put off visiting the springs until the next day. By then, I'd been on crutches for five and a half weeks. I'd gotten quite skilled at getting around with them, but found that using the crutches in the sweaty, humid Florida climate produced some agonizing chaffing under the arms. I'd been doing exercises to strengthen my back and reduce pressure on the nerve and had noticed it was getting easier for me to walk around my hotel room without crutches (or any pain) as long as I wore my shoes with major arch support. I decided to venture out that day without the crutches, and while I had to walk very slowly when I first started out, I haven't used the crutches since! It turns out that improving the nerve signals to my foot by strengthening my back helped the bones in my foot move back into their usual positions so that the bone spur no longer was digging painfully into places where it didn't belong!

I loved this sunlit patch of swamp visible from the road that ran through the park to the lodge!

I had been warned by my friend, the groom-to-be, to watch out for wild hogs because the best man had encountered two on one of the area roads, an incident that resulted in some damage to his car. I was quite delighted to add hogs (pronounced as two-syllable word when spoken by the locals) to my list of animals to keep an eye out for, but when my father and I arrived at the springs, the dominate wildlife on display was several hundred teenagers on a field trip. The cacophony they created was a great incentive for us to quickly hop on a boat for a tour of the Wakulla River, which is created by the 400,000 gallons of water flowing out of the spring every minute. It was a fantastic decision because that beautiful boat ride ranks as one of the greatest outdoor experiences of my life!

The Wakulla River

The river flows through a magnificent landscape of tall cypresses draped with long gray streamers of Spanish moss. The shores are dense with brush and the shallow river is dotted with swaths of pickerel weed and bullrushes. Ibises, anhingas, and egrets abound, as do turtles, common moorhens, and alligators. The very best part of all, however, was the manatees. During my previous years in Florida, the only manatees I saw were those in an aquarium, so seeing them in the wild was such a treat. We must have seen about a dozen of them, including a mother and baby. I was absolutely thrilled when one surfaced right next to where I was sitting in the boat, allowing me to snap several clear photographs! By the time the hour-long trip was over, the buses carrying the hundreds of rowdy teens were pulling away and my opinion of Florida had been vastly improved by the beautiful scenery of the Wakulla River.

Wakulla River views.

An ibis.

A female anhinga.

A close encounter with a manatee.

A small alligator shares a sunning spot with four red-belled turtles.

A larger alligator swimming in the river.

The wedding guest.

I encountered my friend in the lobby of the 1937 lodge on the park grounds where the wedding was to be held, but he was deep in preparations for the wedding and I opted not to take up much of his time. I intended to go to the informal party being held that night, but ended up needing to rest after my first day of walking and the effects of so much scenery. The next morning I dolled myself up for the wedding and headed back to the lodge. It turned out the only person I knew well other than the groom was another one of my former roommates, so I felt a bit awkward. I went to a very small school, so I knew most of the guests by sight and remembered many of their names, but I didn't personally know most of them, especially since they were almost all a year or two behind me. (The groom, also a year behind me, was my roommate my senior year and made friends with most of the guests from our college who were present, as well as the bride, after I graduated.) I also found that while I was able to get around without crutches, my legs were so weak from five and a half weeks of minimal use that I kept having to sit down. But at least I looked fabulous! I also did a great job chatting with the people at my table once we'd sat down for a meal, but ultimately had to leave before the wedding was over. That said, I was there for eight hours! I had only expected to make it through two or three, so this was a triumph.

Egrets wading in a pond in the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge.

Heavy rain falling
on the refuge.

All of the other guests departed the next day, but we had scheduled an extra day in the Wakulla area in case I needed to rest up after the wedding. I arranged to see the groom later in the afternoon and then my father and I set off for the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge, comprised of 68,000 acres spread across three counties along the Gulf of Mexico, and only a few miles south of Wakulla Springs. It's a vast system of pine and hardwood hammocks, wetlands, ponds, and estuaries that have been set aside as wintering habitat for migrating birds. Our arrival coincided with that of a heavy downpour, but after a bit of waiting, it moved on and we slowly drove out to the St. Marks lighthouse, stopping now and then so I could photograph various birds and butterflies. The sun was shining--rather thinly--over the choppy, silvery Gulf when we reached the end of the road at the lighthouse. I was thrilled, when looking up into a pine tree next to the lighthouse, to spot an osprey sitting on a branch just above me! I took dozens of photographs and was immensely pleased to have found myself in such close quarters with one of my favorite birds of prey. On our drive back toward the visitor's center, I spotted an even more exciting photographic opportunity: a softshell turtle! I'd never seen such a weird-looking face on a turtle and was delighted that it tolerated my presence as it basked on the road, allowing me to get some extreme close-ups. I also saw a snake sunning on the road as we were driving, but unlike the turtle, it didn't stick around to get its picture taken. Then we took a little walk near the visitor's center where baby alligators had been sighted the day before, but we spotted nary a baby gator. I did get to photograph a colorful grasshopper, though. I was well pleased with my nature photography successes as we went back to the lodge at Wakulla Springs so I could spend a little time with my friend.

A colorful Gulf fritillary.

The St. Marks lighthouse.

An osprey overhead.

A bizarre-looking Florida softshell turtle!

A large and brightly-colored grasshopper.

Here I am with the happy couple.

I was glad to spy him in the lobby and we were able to engage in pleasant conversation for an hour or so, just the kind of talking that we used to do back when we were roommates, the sort that had endeared him to me all those years ago. I was so glad to have a chance to spend some time with him outside the rather stressful setting of the wedding. After my father snapped a photo of me with my friend and his new wife, it was back to the hotel to get some rest ahead of the next day's drive back to Orlando, once again through Gainesville.

We rolled back into Gainesville in the early afternoon with two items on the agenda: to hang out again with my friends and their new baby and also to meet some dogs I met on the internet.

Bug and Pug share some love.

Yes, dogs. Of course, anyone who knows me at all knows that I love dogs and it should be no surprise that I follow quite a few dog rescues and "dogs" on Facebook. One of the pages that makes me laugh the most is the one belonging to Sarge Wolf-Stringer. Sarge himself is now deceased, but I find the antics of the remaining members of his pack, and especially those of elderly Mary Todd Lincoln the Pug and her young boy-toy Junior "Bug" the Pit Bull, to be highly entertaining. Their family had recently moved to Gainesville and I'd sent them a message asking if I could meet the dogs while I was in town, figuring it to be a long shot. But they said yes! So on the first of October, I found myself in the company of their six friendly dogs, distributing petting and being enthusiastically licked in return. It was fun to meet them in the flesh, though they seemed SMALLER in person than they are in their photos and I was reminded that the personalities they assume in cyberspace are, in fact, largely invented by their owners, not that I couldn't project them back on the dogs! It was a lot of fun and a great example of how the internet (and Facebook) can help strangers find common ground and meet, then, in person. I wasn't able to take as many good photos as I would have like (the dogs were far too wiggly!), but I certainly carried away some wonderful memories.

Mary Todd Lincoln and Martha Washington were nearly as happy to see me as I was happy to see them!

Dark clouds and rain move across Paynes Prairie

I should also mention that some scheduling conflicts with squeezing in both the dogs and my friends arose, so my father and I found ourselves with about an hour and a half of spare time. We opted to drive out to Paynes Prairie so I could take more photos of Florida plants and animals, though we once again encountered a Floridian downpour of the sort that makes driving nearly impossible. But like most Floridian downpours, it eventually moved on and we were able to take a walk out onto a viewing platform. We didn't see any alligators, as we had hoped, but the rain ended up giving me the opportunity to photograph dragonflies. With an abundance of mosquitoes and other flying insects to feed on, dragonflies are all over the place in Florida, but they move so quickly and are so easily startled that it was impossible to get a picture of one. As it so happened, the dragonflies needed to stop and sit and dry their wings out after the heavy rain and one opted to do so on the railing of the viewing platform where I was standing. I carefully moved my camera closer and closer, taking picture after picture, knowing it might fly away at any moment, but it never budged! I was able to photograph a few other dragonflies pausing to dry their wings, too, though none nearly as close. I was also extremely excited to spot a pair of yellow garden orbweavers. In my mind, "garden" implies a certain smaller domestic scale as well as an indication of habitat, but these spiders were enormous. The body of the larger was about the size of my thumb! I personally think "huge dramatically-colored orbweavers" would be a better name, though they were surprisingly camouflaged; I'm sure many people walk past without seeing them. I was glad to add their photos to the great shots of a banana spider I'd taken up at Wakulla Springs.

I couldn't believe my luck when this dragonfly remained still long enough for me to photograph it!

The innocently named "yellow garden orbweaver."
It is bigger in real life than it appears on your screen!

And then it was time to see the baby again, now at home and five days old! It also gave me an opportunity to converse more closely with my friends, though make no mistake, I made sure I got to hold their infant again! It was such a pleasure to sit in the pretty sunroom of their apartment, cradling a baby, and having pleasant conversation with longtime friends! It was evening when my father and I finally got on the road again, heading south to Orlando. We were followed into town by yet another downpour, but Florida without storms wouldn't be Florida!

Babies are cool.

Especially this baby.

Baby feet!

Heavy rain in Orlando.

Our plane bound for Seattle didn't depart until evening, so my father and I decided to use our final day in Florida to drive over to the Atlantic coast. We thought about visiting the Kennedy Space Center, but ultimately decided it would be too much walking for me. Instead, we opted to see the ocean and found ourselves in Cocoa Beach. I was surprised by how glad I was to see "my" kind of Florida. Cocoa Beach may be an Atlantic surfer town and Sarasota a artsy/wealthy-retiree Gulf town, but they share the same plants, the same pastel hues, and same cheerful brightness to the light. I hadn't thought I missed Sarasota at all, but I guess part of me HAD developed a fondness for the landscape. But what I really wanted to see was the water, so after passing the Ron Jon surf shop that had been advertised on billboards our entire route, we parked at the end of a side street and made our way over the small dunes and onto the beach.

Yours truly enjoying
the beach.

Boy, was it ever lovely! I love the ocean and of course couldn't resist wading in the water. It was incredibly warm, probably close to eighty degrees. It was the kind of water you could have lingered in all day. I was rather sorry we only had fifteen minutes to spend there. It did my soul a great deal of good to stand on the white sand with warm water swirling around my ankles, gazing out at the blue ocean and the white foam of the breaking waves even for just those few minutes. It was with a light heart that I followed my father back to our car. After lunching on some excellent Thai food (why is Thai food in Florida so good? and furthermore, why was all the Thai food I ever tried in Chicago so mediocre?), we headed inland, back to Orlando, to the miles of chain stores, and toward looming storms. Once we reached the airport, I changed out of my shorts into a pair of soft pants for the plane, but I liked knowing that I carried on my legs the sand and salt of one coast as I journeyed to another.

Cocoa Beach.

Laughing gulls taking it easy.

Warm surf.

All in all, I was gone for eight days, traveled 1,010 miles by car, traveled more than 5,000 miles by plane, and took 927 photos. I saw some of my closest friends from college, encountered wild manatees, finally ate at Waffle House, photographed a softshell turtle, and met my first newborn baby. I discovered I could once again walk without crutches and I could fly on an airplane without too much misery. In other words, the trip was amazing.

A flock of ibises flying over the wetlands in St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge.

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Injuries Afoot

This pretty scene doesn't LOOK dangerous...

The time has come at last to relate the tale of the injury that has had me on crutches for a month now. Part of why the story has been so long in coming is that it took more than three weeks to determine what the injury was. There was no doubt about how it occurred, however. 

The collie and I pose for a post-swim portrait.

It was the first day of my most recent gig looking after Mr. Gorgeous and the weather was exceptionally fine. His owners informed me that their teenage son was routinely convincing Mr. Gorgeous to swim in the lake for exercise and that I was welcome (though not required) to continue this program. Mr. Gorgeous' lakeside house has its own private beach and dock and is a very pleasant place to hang out, especially on a sunny day, so I put on my bikini, strapped Mr. Gorgeous into his lifejacket (in case his aquatic ambition was greater than his stamina), and we made our way down the steep hill to the lake shore.

The rocks that caused all the trouble.

The shallows of Lake Washington, like most lakes and rivers in this area, are lined with stones, most about the size of the palm of your hand, and usually sport a slippery layer of algae. I waded in with Mr. Gorgeous (he was feeling a bit uncertain about the size of the wind-pushed waves), an activity that required quite a bit of sliding and gripping and constantly readjusting my balance as I attempted to walk into the waves on those slick rocks. Mr. Gorgeous ultimately declined to go beyond where his feet could touch, but since I'd already gotten wet and adapted to the chilly water, I decided to go swimming myself. After splashing around a bit and jumping off the dock, lying in the sun to dry off and then sitting in the shade to admire the view a bit longer, Mr. Gorgeous and I made our way back up the steep hill to his house, where I proceeded to read outside on the chaise lounge for about an hour, and at last went in for a long, lovely shower. I had just come back downstairs, clean and happy and ready for dinner, when I put weight on my left foot and experienced a horribly sharp stabbing sensation in my foot near the ankle. My pain scale runs pretty high--scratching my eyeball and having a migraine so severe I thought I might die top the list--but this pain merited a full 9 out of 10. It made me exclaim and jump involuntarily even if I knew I was going to happen. I found I could hobble on the outside of my foot without causing that stabbing pain, but something was clearly wrong. However, the foot wasn't swollen or discolored and had full range of motion when I didn't have weight on it, so I figured it wasn't fractured. I took some Advil, followed the tenants of RICE (rest, ice, compression, elevation), and decided to see what the morning would bring. When I experimentally put weight on it the next morning, the severe stabbing pain was still present. So I called in the cavalry and the cavalry brought crutches. It was eighteen days before I put full weight on my left foot again.

I've actually had quite a bit of trouble with my feet and legs over the years, but never had an injury that required crutches. I was born with short muscles in my legs, to the point that I was a tiptoe walker until I was about six. When I was eight, I developed inflamed growth plates in my feet. This happens when the bones of the leg grow faster than the muscles, causing the tight Achilles tendon to put tremendous strain on the not-yet-calcified growth plate in the heel. Because of my tight calves and hamstrings, I was already predisposed to this condition and then it didn't help that I grew like a weed: I shot up 10 inches in less than three years. Until I stopped growing and my growth plates hardened in my early teens, walking on hard surfaces, walking moderate distances, or running more than a few yards (the condition became apparent when I joined the school's girls basketball team as a third grader) caused pain severe enough that I was forced to limp or walk on tiptoe. Something as simple as a trip to the mall--requiring lots of walking and standing on hard floors--could become an achy, agonizing experience.

The big toe on my left foot is turned out about 31° and is starting to underlap my second toe.

It was while seeing a foot specialist as an eight year-old that I discovered I had another anatomical anomaly: a bunion. A bunion occurs when the big toe starts angling toward toward the second toe, causing first joint to protrude outward. The bunion can get swollen and painful. My bunion is genetic in origin and has gotten more severe and painful over time, though it's better now than when I was working ten hour days on my feet! I've largely found it to be an amusing abnormality, almost like a party trick, though it does make it difficult to find shoes, especially high heels, that will accommodate the bunion's bulge. The way it is deforming my foot also contributes to the fact that in terms of length, my left foot is a full size smaller than my right!

My knees do not line up over my feet. The left foot turns out at approximately 42° and the right at 28°

Another structural anomaly that has present since I was little is that if my knees are pointing forward, my feet turn out. It's more pronounced on the left side than the right. It makes me ill-suited for activities like riding a bicycle that require the feet to point forward because my knees are then forced to turn in. When I pedal a bicycle, my knees cross over the centerline of my body! Between the way my feet and knees turn and my short leg muscles, I've got a bit of a funny gait, most pronounced, again, on the left--I sort of swing my leg around instead of picking the foot up and putting it down in a straight line. It means I'm not cut out for running and I simply physically cannot properly execute the "frog kick" component when swimming breaststroke! None of these imperfections have been disabling (though they have often been painful and placed limitations on my physical activities and my shoe choices over the years), but over time I've come to regard my legs and feet, especially the left side, as inferior products, only adequate as a means of getting around.

And then there was the SI issue. I tentatively took up snowboarding when I was in my teens and one time, when I was fifteen, I took a hard fall on my tailbone on the infamous "Cascade concrete," a surface more akin to ice than snow. I remember sitting there, slightly shocked, making an assessment of my body, and thinking, "Wow, I think I just really hurt myself." But all the parts worked when I tried them and so I got up and continued to snowboard poorly. (Snowboarding poorly is still a great deal of fun, for the record.) My initial assessment had been correct, however. One, I'm pretty sure in retrospect that I fractured my tailbone. For a couple of months, it was too painful for me to sit on directly, but I was too embarrassed by the injury's location to see a doctor. Two, the jarring of the fall put my sacroiliac joint out. It spent fourteen years locked in a twisted position that, unbeknownst to me, was the source of my constant low back and hip pain. I had so many other unpleasant things going on in my life during those fourteen years that the pain in my hips was never a priority. Another reason I didn't attend to it was that I was quite used to having pain in my lower body by that time and I figured it was another manifestation of my oddly angled feet and unusually tight muscles. By the time my physical therapist diagnosed the problem, the SI position was extreme enough that my left leg was more than an inch shorter than my right! Walking around on legs of different lengths is really hard on the body, especially the back. The SI problem is was also responsible, I just learned, for the fact that my left leg is much skinnier than my right. I first noticed this phenomenon when skinny jeans became fashionable. Pants that were tight on my right thigh were loose on the left, so much so that I was compelled to measure the difference: my right thigh had a circumference one inch greater than that of my left. I've lost muscle mass in my right leg since the migraines have forced me to adapt a sedentary lifestyle, but my right calf muscle, for example, is ¾ of an inch larger in circumference than my left. This left-side weakness is the result of long-term irritation of the sciatic nerve.

What does all this medical history have to do with my recent foot injury? We'll get to that soon!

So there I was, dog-sitting and on crutches. I remember, as a kid, thinking that they looked like fun, and maybe crutches are fun if you're young and spry and full of boundless, squirrelly energy, but I found them to be incredibly hard work. Had I not been building up my arm strength through working with horses, I might not have been strong enough to have used crutches at all. The first few days were especially painful, both under the arms and in the palms of my hand, which is where you are suddenly bearing your body weight. It took some time to figure out the rhythm and I failed to negotiate a step my first day and fell hard, resulting in large, ugly bruises on my knees. (After that I carefully made my way up and down stairs by stepping on the outside of my foot.) Another major inconvenience of crutches is that you can't carry anything! That meant I had to hobble around on my foot in order to fill bowls of dog food or glasses of water until I realized that, thanks to the hardwood floors, I could maneuver around the main level of Mr. Gorgeous' house in a wheeled desk chair. Still, it was hard work to get anything done and I couldn't wait to see my PT so she could assess the foot and start treatment.

One of the bruises I sustained while learning to use crutches!

Unfortunately, while I was en route to my PT appointment, my physical therapist tripped and fell, breaking her collarbone. She waited long enough for me to arrive so she could give me the bad news and then she was off to the ER. She's been out of commission this whole time, so I went to see a different physical therapist. He discovered a new symptom that I hadn't been aware of: my injured foot was shockingly cold. He said that I needed to get it X-rayed to make sure there wasn't more extensive damage, such as a small fracture, than I had suspected. So off I went to my primary care doctor's office. The nurse practitioner was also startled and concerned by how cold my foot was. I had pulses in my foot, so it meant that I was still getting blood flow, but it was a worrisome symptom. X-rays revealed nothing more than a bone spur in the area of the foot that hurt when I put weight on it, but my doctor and my nurse practitioner decided someone with more expertise should take a look at it.

As you can see in this X-ray of my foot, there is a substantial space between the cuneiform bone (the blocky bones that connect to the long metatarsals that go out to the toes) connected to my big toe and the 2nd and 3rd cuneiforms. This because my foot is deformed by my bunion, but the podiatrist thought it might represent a dislocation.

Unfortunately, the podiatrist they sent me to was a quack. He was utterly unqualified to diagnose the injury, though he certainly tried. It would have been better off if he'd simply said that he didn't know what the problem was. He took more X-rays and announced that while perhaps there was a dislocation, it was hard to know because it might just be the way the bones of my foot are aligned because of my bunion and the only way to know for sure would be to compare it to a healthy X-ray of my foot. His recommendation was for me to wear a boot 24/7 and not put any weight on it for the next four weeks and that it should fix itself. For good measure, he would also inject the nerve in my leg with lidocaine, creating temporary paralysis of the foot. My mother was not about to let him inject a nerve (a procedure not without risk) without a full explanation of why there might be a nerve problem in my foot, so we consented to the boot and hustled out of there. In one respect he was right: the foot did warm up when it was immobilized by the boot and I think it was ultimately good for it to be stabilized. But the boot was really hard work. It only weighs a little more than two and a half pounds, but hauling that extra weight around on the end of my leg while on crutches and unable to put any of my weight on it was exhausting. By the time I stopped wearing the boot, I'd been exercising so much just getting myself from place to place that I had lost three pounds!

My heavy boot included air bladders at the back of the heel that I inflated with the clever little blue pump to create a snug fit.

My mother had been leery of sending me to a podiatrist in the first place, but we had trusted my doctor's recommendation. For the next assessment, we decided to go to the experts: the foot and ankle clinic run jointly by the university hospital and the excellent regional trauma hospital, but it was a week before they could see me. I spent several stressful days calling various orthopedists to see if anyone could see me sooner and worrying about the undiagnosed state of my injury, especially if it were indeed a dislocation. Dislocated bones in the foot can present only subtly on X-rays, may only hurt while weight-bearing, and cause coldness in the foot: in other words, I had all the symptoms. The podiatrist's claim that a month in the boot would cause things to straighten out on their own was just plain wrong: dislocated bones need to be put back in place and dislocations in the mid-foot, where I was having my pain, often require surgery to correct. I wanted a definitive diagnosis very badly! My weekend trip to the San Juan Islands helped me relax some and we had set things up in the house to make it easier for me to move around with my boot on, but I was so happy when the day of my appointment at the specialty clinic finally came.

That extra pointed tip on my navicular bone was deemed responsible for my foot pain. 

After a very thorough exam and more X-rays, the diagnosis came back as this: I actually was suffering from two injuries. The pain in my foot was caused by the bone spur and the coldness was being caused by pressure on a nerve because of a back injury. Slipping around and using my feet to stabilize myself on the rocks had caused hyper-extension of my foot and sent the bone spur poking places that it shouldn't and apparently in my efforts to stay balanced, I'd hurt my back, too. I hadn't felt any back pain, but after I started standing on my foot and walking just a little bit, there it was: in my lower back, on the lefthand side, right next to the spine. Because I'd been on crutches since the morning after the injury, I'd never realized it was there. The specialist prescribed physical therapy to address the back issue, which would relieve pressure on the nerve and should alleviate the coldness, the flatness of my arch (it had collapsed), and the occasional burning sensation in the foot. He advised me to stop wearing the boot, since it would likely start causing strain-related problems that would outweigh the benefits, and to carefully begin standing and walking on the foot as much as pain would allow as inflammation around the bone spur died down.

 The muscles supporting my spine are not doing a good job of stabilizing my vertebrae!

To say that I was hugely relieved not to have a serious injury that would require surgery was an understatement! I started PT again where we are working on strengthening the tiny muscles--the multifidi--that should be supporting the spine. Mine aren't, so my vertebrae are moving from side to side much more than they should, which irritates the nerves. The goal is also to eventually help me building up the strength and flexibility in my left leg, though it's possible down the road, if things don't improve, I might need to consult a neurologist. I've been standing on the foot and walking just a few steps here and there--like from my bed to the closet and other short distances--but have found that while I no longer have the terrible stabbing sensation, I can't move flex my ankle very much if I have weight on it. That means I still have to get around on crutches most of the time. If the problem continues, it's possible that it will be necessary to remove the bone spur or take some other more intensive action. In the meantime, because my arch has flattened, I have been wearing my Dansko shoes to help me stand properly. Otherwise, it puts a lot of foreign strain on my muscles. A month is a long time to be on crutches and it looks like I'll still have to rely on them for several more weeks, but it certainly is easier to get around if I don't have that heavy boot on and I can stand when I need to! I'm also extremely glad I won't have to wear the boot on my upcoming trip to Florida for a wedding because I have the cutest outfit and the bulky boot would have totally ruined the effect! I've had to cancel my lessons with Drifter indefinitely and have been unable to swim and have been severely limited in my ability to take photos, but what can you do? Swimming in the lake with Mr. Gorgeous was a perfectly reasonable undertaking. I've slipped around on lake- and river-bottom rocks many times without sustaining injury. It's an unfortunate twist in my ongoing disability saga and simply getting around the house sucks up a lot of my energy, but it's just what I have to live with.

When walking, because of the way
my hips, knees & feet are aligned,
my leg crosses in front of my body

So what does this foot injury have to do with my long history of issues with the bones, muscles, and nerves in my feet and legs? Well, quite a bit. I was born with short hamstrings, which I've learned can also be connected to an innate instability of the spine, which in turn can impact muscle strength and development. Whether I was born with inward turning knees or my muscle imbalances prevented my knees from assuming a normal, forward-facing position as I grew, I developed a funny gait, especially on my left side, to compensate for the tight muscles and abnormal leg position. An uneven gait can cause further back problems and I'm wondering now if life-long spinal instability and my leg issues may be the reason why I've always had poor balance. My poor balance made it very hard to snowboard, thus upping the chances of me taking a hard fall on my tailbone like I did when I was fifteen. Fifty-eight percent of sacroiliac joint injuries like mine stem from similar traumatic accidents, but my long-standing weakness and instability and stress on the muscles, joints, and nerves, especially on the left-hand side, made me predisposed to get such an injury. And it was the left-hand sacroiliac joint that suffered the damage and spent fourteen years in a rotated position. As I've said, that made one leg much shorter than the other, further impacting my gait, further destabilizing my spine, and in addition to putting pressure on my left-hand sciatic nerve, leading to increased stiffness and muscle atrophy, I'm wondering now if the back pain I used to also have higher in my back created pressure on the spinal cord and is why I have the world's flattest posterior. Obviously, from a genetic standpoint, it's not a place where my body stores much fat, but it intrigues me to think that pressure on the nerves might have contributed to the lack of development in my gluts over the years. It might also explain why in years past I put relatively little muscle on my legs for the amount of exercise--including weight-lifting--I was engaged in. And then it happens that when I do finally get my SI straightened out a couple of years ago, it comes at a time when I'm forced by the migraines to keep my physical activity to a minimum. That means even if my left leg is getting better information through the nerve and had more capacity to put on muscle, it didn't get the opportunity. And meanwhile the weakness of the little muscles stabilizing my spine remained unaddressed. That means I waded into the water with Mr. Gorgeous with a balance problem, a structurally weak foot that could easily move in ways that it shouldn't (thereby allowing the previously unproblematic bone spur to poke into places where it didn't belong), and a spine unable to keep its vertebrae in line (making it very easy for one to get tweaked in a way that put pressure on the nerves). I was set up for exactly this kind of injury to happen.

My legs as seen from behind
and reflected in a mirror--my left
leg is therefore the one on the right.
The size difference is very clear!

On the bright side, I'm glad to finally have some more insight into my long history of stiffness, pain, and injuries. Looking back at old photos, I'm rather amazed to see that the differences in the musculature of my legs was already visible by the time I was four. That means I've been getting poor nerve information in my left leg since I was a little kid! No wonder I've always had wimpy legs, skimpy gluts, back aches, and had trouble with roller skates, snowboards, and bicycles! It's a bit of a relief, really, to realize that innate structural issues causing irritation of the nerves are responsible for some of my physical ineptitude and not a lack of, say, effort or desire or moral fiber. This inconvenient injury means that I'll finally be able to address this left-side weakness that has been hampering my body since I was a toddler, which should ultimately result in stronger, more flexible, and more EVEN legs. I might get a better ability to balance out of the deal, too. Come next summer, if I dare to go wading in the lake (I may not!), it is possible that my body will have the proper tools to slip, slide, and then stand again unharmed.

*****
The injury update, two months out:

A week and a half after starting spine stabilizing exercises, I was able to start walking again without crutches. As communication between my nerves and my foot improved, the bones in my foot went back into their proper positions and the bone spur ceased to poke into where it didn't belong. My strength and flexibility has improved tremendously, my arch has almost completely reformed, and as of the last week or so, there is no longer any coldness in the foot at all. My sciatic pain has lessened considerably in the last few weeks as well. I still have the occasional issue if I walk on uneven ground, but the change from where I was a month ago to where I am now is almost miraculous! It underscores the importance of getting a good diagnosis and the right treatment. I'm glad I persisted in getting a second opinion and that in the end, some very simple muscle strengthening exercises were all the cure I needed!

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