From heart to foot

Last night, our middle child stepped on a pencil.  We examined him as best we could, but couldn’t see any evidence that there was any graphite left in it.  So we cleaned it, disinfected it, applied some neosporin, and put a band-aid on.  This morning, however, it didn’t look better ... in fact, it looked a bit worse.  What worried me more than that, however, was the fact that he was showing a lot of sensitivity when pressing on his foot—even when pressing the skin well away from the wound.  This is usually a sign that there’s something, probably something sharp, under the skin.  So off he went to urgent care.

We’re not sure if it was just the angle that he stepped on it, or the fact that he freaked out a bit and yanked it out too hard, or just plain bad luck, but, as it turns out, x-rays show that there’s a relatively long shaft of graphite embedded fairly deeply into his plantar fascia (that’s the connective tissue that forms the majority of your foot’s arch), almost all the way to the bone.  I say “it is” embedded rather than “it was” embedded because they did not remove it today.  We have to get him an appointment with a podiatrist ASAP and he will most likely have to undergo some plastic surgery.

Now, as you may recall, this is the same kid who underwent heart surgery nearly a year ago.  Compared to that, this’ll be nothing.  But, at the same time, it’s pretty frustrating to have survived all that—breastbone broken in half and tied back together with wire, giant tube in his chest that they had to yank out, piece of a dead guy’s heart in him now—only to be sent back to the hospital by a friggin’ pencil.  I told him quite frankly that it wasn’t fair, and I know it must completely suck to go to a bunch of doctors who don’t even have the good grace to take out the annoying thing that’s stuck in his foot.  And I told him we’d figure out a way to make it better.

So, you know: now he’s planning for surgery gifts.  Last surgery got him a Nintendo Switch.  He’s already negotiating: will this surery be big enough to warrant a whole ‘nother console? or just a really good videogame?  Just how good of a game are we talkin’ about here?  We’re holding off answering these vital questions until we talk to the podiatrist, which will hopefully be tomorrow.  But I’m guessing it’ll need to be a pretty damn good videogame.

Sigh.