Despite the fact that I finally understood what it was for. It was a punishment. For being reckless. Without the appropriate Extreme Sport Insurance. Or Extreme Leisure Insurance. What I had failed to take into account was that even lying naked in a hot chicken shed/outhouse was inherent with many dangers. No one should contemplate inactive leisure pursuits without the appropriate precautions. Like being very heavily insured. So the NHS doesn’t have an excuse to take out some of its anger on you. In the form of attaching large white devils to you leg. Like having one’s home constantly disability ready. So that at any moment a crutch-bound person can manoeuvre jauntily around the building smiling and humming a merry tune.
But I must have done my stint in purgatory because today I was released.
This is what happened:
The physicist drove me to the hospital at the allotted time allotted on the appointment card. The appointment was for Trauma Clinic.
And I know why they call it that. The four-hour wait was traumatic. Luckily they don’t charge for that handy service. Not like you would pay for a fairground ride in order to traumatise yourself, or a very bad movie, or even a holiday with one’s family. No, believe it or not, the promised trauma (complete with crying babies, drunken men, gabbling old ladies and an odd smell of wee), was completely and utterly free. If we don’t take into account the parking fees, the sending the physicist to the café/shop/little trolley thing for yet more food to keep us amused. And the sending the physicist to the cashpoint for more money to buy more food to keep us amused.
But it was all totally and utterly worth it. Because the first thing that happened (after the four hours and the mountain of food and the trauma) was that a nice lady with a pair of strange scissors cut the plaster off.
It was bliss. I sighed much in the manner of someone who was not at all traumatised but had just undergone a very different sort of experience.
The doctor poked my foot.
The doctor asked for a detailed explanation of how the hell I came to break the forth metatarsal and none of the others.
I explained that I was a professional football player and simply following current fashion but putting a new and interesting twist on it by breaking a hitherto-unclaimed by-other-celeb-footballers bone. He seemed to accept that in good faith.
Then he said the dreaded word. ‘Plaster’. My heart sunk. My bliss faded. My football career was on the rocks when I had only invented it moments before.
‘No!!!’ I cried in horror.
‘A walking plaster, it will be smaller,’ he assured me, scribbling on his slip of paper.
I contemplated that for a brief interlude. A walking plaster. Handy, seeing as I couldn’t. I wondered if it could also drive and dance tango. If that were to case then I was going to accept this man’s offer. But then I hesitated. In the previous four hours I had observed many a traumatised soul emerge from the hidden depths of the clinic with plasters on. Some of the plasters were a nice shade of blue. Some of then were not adhering to legs but clutching on to people’s arms. Some people actually appeared to emerge plaster-less. But definitely none of the plasters were walking. None. I’d have noticed that. And the physicist would have commented on the unlikely physics of it.
I realised that, in his naivety this doctor was trying to make plasters sound a lot more exciting than they actually are.
‘I hated that other plaster!’ I exclaimed. Hoping he would change his mind in a way that doctors never do. That he would throw up his hands in surprised delight and declare that my foot was not broken. It was all a dream. That x-ray on the screen was simply from an archive of interesting x-rays they had scrounged off youtube and should I care to click the mouse it would dance a fandango.
He peered at the x-ray, peered at my foot, peered at the ceiling, peered at his small piece of paper. And then eureka!!! The impossible happened.
‘You could probably have a metatarsal slipper, since it is the fourth and therefore not too vulnerable.’
I had no idea what a metatarsal slipper was. But it sounded good. It sounded like something small. Unlike a plaster. Which is something big. I didn’t hesitate, or wait for any further explanation just in case it was all a dream,
‘Yes!’ I shouted much in the manner of someone who was not at all traumatised but had just undergone a very different sort of experience.
And that is just what I have. A metatarsal slipper. It is the lingerie of the bone-support world. It is small, discrete, slips on and off like a wisp of silk demonstrating how well-shaven a leg is. It looks like this:
And HA to all you harbingers of doom that predicted I would be in plaster for 6 weeks.
And sorry all the men who were developing plaster fetishes just to please me. But really, metatarsal slippers, you have to admit, fucking sexy eh?
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