Toes

I know this blog is somewhat dreary visually, and I was going to enliven it with a picture of a toe, but all the pictures of toes and even of feet were so Godawful ghastly I couldn't bring myself to do it. Toes in general aren't too good-looking, are they?

I bring up toes because I had surgery on one of mine. The toe in question is doing fine, thank you for asking.

I am squeamish and not particularly fond of looking at body parts in their less glamorous moments. SO I am not going to take a picture of my toe and post it here.

However, high tech has come to the world of the toe. The sore toe is sent home from the hospital with about 50 lb of high tech gear, including a machine which periodically circulates ice water around the poor wounded piggy. It's a marvel of ingenuity.

Then there's the rubber boot, which is designed to allow the patient to take a bath or shower or go deep sea diving, judging by the four-color illustration on the package insert, which shows pictures of happy, cheery swimmers gamboling in the surf.

The principle of the boot is this: there are two sizes of rubber boots for waterproof feet: small, for children, and large, for everyone else, from petite size 5 1/2 ladies to size 14 football players. Since it must fit all these feet, it is on the large size.

Attached to this gizmo is a small pump, with which you are supposed to pump all the air out of the boot after you put it on and before you get in the pool. This takes the air out, and then the boot is snug and keeps your foot dry. In theory.

In practice, it would take you a week to expel all the air from this object. I managed to get the thing over my foot, even though the opening is about 4 inches in diameter (that's so no water gets into it). I ended with the object flapping off my leg and putting me off balance since it weighs a good 20 lb. It kept the water off my foot, but unfortunately its outside held enough water to thoroughly flood the bathroom floor.

I believe this was invented by those who brought us the stimulus bill.