I got spurs that jingle, jangle, jingle,
As I go riding merrily along.
Jingle, Jangle, Jingle - Gene Autry
Like the lyrics say in that jaunty little old skool Country Western ditty most famously used a few years ago in one of the trailers for Fallout New Vegas, I indeed have spurs. But they don't make a sound and I'm not exactly merry about them at all.
I've had my big toe bone spurs for likely over two years now. Both big toes. The right one about two to three times worse. I started having mild aches after walking sessions like rounds at work (work: remember that?) in spring of 2018 but I thought it was just a mild recurrence of either true gout or faux gout (I've had both) that lingered rather than violently flared up. But the aches kept getting a bit worse each month so I thought the next logical thing: I must have really smacked my toes, breaking them, one night while getting drunk and totally blacked it out. Quite logical and quite possible.
I went to my doctor the summer before last and she was thinking it was an infection since by the time I decided to get seen about them there was a persistent pain and both bases of the big toes, especially the right one, were swollen and red. She referred me to a podiatrist, I went and lo and behold, the x-rays revealed, clear even to me looking at them, tiny jutted points of bone protruding out over the joints. These protrusions caused the joint to develop a bunion condition (a build up of bone on the joint) which further caused inflammation and pain, but more importantly the spurs prevented the joint from operating properly causing me to lose the flexibility needed for proper support and locomotion.
So basically I couldn't walk like a human. The problem meant I was deformed into walking perpetually awkward, always off-balance and forcing the rest of my skeletal structure to accommodate a warped and stilted gait, like I was a gorilla trying to walk on two legs.
One reason, among other factors, they don't walk on two legs all the time (they do for short stints when needed) is because they have a similar issue of the joints of the feet not having evolved for bipedalism like humans have. Well, humans except, now, me. I've apparently devolved.
I had planned on getting surgery to correct the issue but I chickened out and didn't want to interrupt what would become my Cruiseathon 2019. And by November of 2018 when I began that endeavor, my toe pain had gotten more manageable as it re-subsided to a dull ache exacerbated by too much walking. Well, my now unemployed lifestyle had the solution for that...sit on my ass all day and do no exercise. Now that's a great idea, right?
And like my concurrent cruising, I was basically "riding merrily along" with the occasional massage or soak in the hot tub to alleviate the minor aches. Until this week.
All of a sudden in the last few days the right toe flares up and it's like a full blown onset of true gout. Funny though, no redness or inflammation. I think it's deeper than can be seen from the surface. I think that spur grew some more. The podiatrist said that was a possibility. I guess my obesity and sedentary-influenced atrophy have made me even more devolved. I guess I'll soon be totally hunched over dragging my knuckles on the ground.
Well, I guess I'll put my free Obamacare to work and give the local podiatrist down the road a call on Monday. I mean, I can't keep going down the path I'm going. It'd eventually get to this:
(WARNING: YET ANOTHER UNNECESSARY FAV MOVIE CLIP ALERT!)