Hello, it's the guy who is supposed to go on a full-out walk-about next year. Except that I murdered my feet on a weekend in New York last August.
In the weeks following New York, my right foot - the foot that has given me problems for a couple of years - healed up pretty nicely. But I still had to keep it bandaged. It was still oozing blood slightly.
The left foot. The left foot that gave me no problems before New York. It just got worse and worse. My daily routine:
1) Clean the wound.
2) Put triple antibiotic in it.
3) Put a gauze pad over it.
4) Wrap it with rolled gauze.
5) Put sock and shoe on.
6) Pull off bloody gauze and sock at the end of the day.
It wasn't getting any better. My foot was developing a thick callus that did not want to close up. To make matters worse, my doctor was out of town on vacation. He got back and took one look at my feet and scheduled the stem cell treatment - a procedure that we had been talking about for a while.
When I talked about this procedure and mention stem cells to people, they automatically assume that I will be putting dead babies in my feet. No, these injections are called "amniomatrix". They harvest the stem cells from discarded amniotic fluid from delivering moms. I was surprised how often I had to explain myself, sometimes more than once to the same person. This shows how controversial stem cell research still is.
The doctor's assistant told me to show up to the hospital. I could eat that day, take my meds, etc. The hospital called the day before - no food or liquids after midnight. So I showed up that afternoon - lightheaded from not eating, hoping for some propofol. (I no longer eschew anesthetics.) The doctor walked in and said I didn't need any anesthesia. He scraped out the wound and injected my wounds every centimeter with the amniomatrix. He wrapped them and told me to stay off of my feet.
With a stack of movies and a stack of books in my room, I set out to heal my feet. I stayed in bed as much as I could, and I got around with crutches. After a couple of days, there was a smell like rotten meat. It started to worry me. Plus my foot was still draining like crazy. I called the doctor. He said it was normal.
Most of all, it was being down. It reminded me too much of last year, when I was tethered to the same bed by an IV line. It reminded me of that dark time, and everything horrible that happened afterwards. In other words, it was a very emotional time for me.
It has been a little over a week since the procedure. It is too soon to tell. I would like to believe in a miracle cure. But I have to fight my skepticism. Hopefully my feet will be healed soon, and I will be on my way to walking this world again.
Below is my right foot, and then my left foot, before the procedure. Hopefully, I can someday post a photo of them healed.
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