With my leg staples and stitches finally out and my bowels beginning to respect my wishes, I was hoisted into a skeletal gurney and rolled down to the shower room, where I fell in love with the world's biggest shower wand--hot water felt wonderful on my legs.
The bad news was that the certified nursing attendant looked at the soles of my feet in horror, grabbed a wet towel, and tried to scrub off a thriving case of athlete's foot, which I hadn't noticed because of long-standing neuropathy inherited from my father.
Probably the fungus was the result of a month of bare feet trapped in huge anti-heel sore plastic boots.
So now I wear the usual hospital socks with traction bars that won't be needed for another month or so, but which hold half a can of foot powder each and waft white dust when anyone touches them, much like the yellow clouds when you shake a pine tree branch in pollen season.
***
For anyone unlucky enough to spend time in a hospital bed, a laptop on top of the bedside table is a wretched thing unless you plug a separate keyboard into its usb port--then you can type comfortably even with one arm in a cast and the other with a broken collarbone while looking at the laptop's screen almost a foot above your fingers.
