When That Thaws, It'll Bleed

I had a doctor I really liked, and then my company changed insurance and I was locked in a kind of doctor purgatory for a decade. With my current job, I've been on a PPO that lets me go back to the doc I liked. But twice now, he's been on vacation when I called and I accepted a substitute.

She's about my age, I think. And I find this oddly comforting, it's like having a chum from high school see to my maladies, and while some might interpret this as a lack of experience, after a decade of being assigned what my ex referred to as The Clown Doctor as my primary care physician, I think I see her as free of the bullshit she might have picked up in an earlier generation of medical training.

I still like the old guy I used to see at this practice in the 90s, but I have no trepidation taking an appointment with this doc.



The Clown Doc's practice was also run incredibly poorly. From the trouble it took to get an appointment and the insufferable wait after the appointed time before he ineffectively treated my ailments, I could infer the country was in a crisis not only of medical expenses but of actual medicine.

This practice, I've never called and not been able to get an appointment that day. I could make myself wait by limiting myself to the old doc on vacation, but if I'm willing to be reasonable, they seem to be willing to be efficient and accommodating.

Following an eighteen month battle with a heel spur, I developed a seed corn callous on the ball of my left foot that was about like walking around with a rock in my shoe. I tried acids, bandaids, plasters, padding and so on. I bought new shoes and inserts for the new shoes.

After I bought the shoes and inserts I thought maybe I'd let my old shoes get too whipped and that was the culprit. And showing this callous to the female Doogie Howser, she seemed to agree it could be that the callous itself had become the irritant. She didn't see any signs of a wart, so she cut a bunch of stuff off with a scalpel and I left the office feeling like a new man. Or an old man with a new left foot, anyway.

The callous came back with a vengeance in record time. I can't swear it didn't begin to gain size in the parking lot of the doctor's office.

I bought my own stuff for shaving callouses, I tried more band-aids and padding and a second shoe insert specifically for ball of the foot problems.

Believe it or not, this is not what brought me back to the doctor. I was brought back to the doctor by a mole in my armpit that seemed to have become more pronounced, larger, darker lately. Moles that change, that could be cancer, right?

After looking at it under magnification, Ms. Doogie pronounced it a skin tag that was benign. I could have it removed but insurance might balk at paying since it was totally cosmetic. See also the skin tag I have on the other side that's been with me since High School.

What about my foot?

'Oh, that's a plantar wart, see the red and black spots?'

She could freeze it with liquid nitrogen, which would hurt and leave a wound that took a couple weeks to heal. Or I could let mother nature take her course, in two years or so the body would recognize the virus at the root of this and fight it off.

I was warned, by the way, that sometimes the freezing thing takes a couple tries. I could heal up and develop the wart anew, easy as getting rejected by much younger women.

My left foot hasn't felt good and/or normal in two years. Let's get on with it.



So she froze the sucker, which is fairly painful but not as bad as I feared. She warned me it would bleed once it thawed (this after the third application of shit so cold it makes styrofoam cups sweat). And she was not wrong.

I'm amused that she chose a Spiderman bandaid for my soon to be bleeding wound. It also strikes me that while my foot hurts a lot right now, even without me standing on it, it doesn't hurt nearly as badly as I've gotten used to it hurting. We'll see if the two week healing process offers some peaks and valleys I haven't anticipated.