I keep joking that I’m staying away from surgeries this year, but this what they mean when they say God’s favorite jokes are the plans of humans.

Today was supposed to be a fairly routine visit to the podiatrist, but it turned out to be more exciting than that.

Some months ago, I injured my big toe. It wasn’t healing properly. Because the injury occurred around a callus that was in the wrong place in the wrong shoe every day, it just didn’t heal.

As a diabetic, I  am sometimes reluctant to tell doctors about foot injuries because they get very concerned and make me nervous. The pulse in my feet is very strong, and there is plenty of feeling in my toes.

It was troubling to me that the wound hadn’t healed, and I’ve heard too many horror stories about diabetics and their feet.

So I went to see. Dr. Daly at the Saratoga Hospital Podiatric Surgery Clinic. She is competent and skilled. I trusted her right away. I learned later that her husband John is an accomplished political cartoonist.

It took a month to get in, and I’m grateful it didn’t take longer.

She is nice and explained things to me patiently and well. I got a good lecture on how foot wounds heal – it’s from the inside out, not the other way around. It was becoming ulcerate.

Calluses can block healing, and healing in a foot comes from the inside, not the outside.

She looked at my foot and in a blink, the room was full of nurses and I was on my back and she was going to work on my toe with surgical precision. I’m now wearing a foot boot, I can’t go to the gym or stay on my feet for long (poor Maria.)

I suspect this was a procedure, not a surgery, but it sure looked and felt like surgery to me. I’m on antibiotics again for a month, and I can only shower with a special waterproof wrap around my leg.

The operation took about an hour and Maria was with me she drove me home, which was quite fortunate. I asked Dr. Daly if I could take a photo of her for my blog while she was drilling holes in my toe, and she seemed startled as if no one had ever asked her that before.

She nodded and said sure.

We did manage to stop at Moby Rick’s Fish Place in Saratoga Springs on the way home and came out with a pound of fresh jumbo shrimp (dinner), their homemade cocktail sauce,  four packets of frozen lobster meat, some fish cakes, some crab cakes, and a tin of Indonesian lump crab meat.

Dinner was delicious.

I will be mostly housebound but we will eat well. Perhaps I should be allowed to go outside for a while.

I might even make another crabmeat pizza if I’m allowed by Nurse Ratchett. I am married to a saint, but not a natural caretaker. It’s good I did a big food shop the other day.

I’m sorry about the gym, I’ll miss it. Life happens and happens.

I can move around, I really won’t need much help.

Once again, I went to the doctor at the right time, and once again, I am fortunate. The foot is not infected but is ulcerated and could have gotten infected. That is something diabetics don’t want.

I take great care controlling my diabetes 2, it paid off this time. I’m once again fortunate to have great doctors and am learning over and over again not to wait too long to see them when I have a problem.

Happy to be home, the shrimp was delicious.