The Tale of a Piece of Glass

Eleven years and three months ago, I was an 8-month pregnant 24-year-old who dropped a glass in our kitchen in Louisville, Kentucky.  I'm sure I picked up the big pieces, but instead of sweeping carefully in all the nooks and crannies to make sure every last piece of glass was off the floor, I took the lazy way out.  I pulled out our red Hoover and set it on hardwood floor mode and vacuumed the kitchen.  #Lazy before hashtags were a thing.

I woke up that night with a horrible leg cramp in my right leg that left me limping to the kitchen the next morning where my left foot found a piece of glass.  I think it went in pretty deep.  I cried and pulled it out and felt that my life was unfairly hard as I was now limping with one leg and walking on my toes with the other foot as I gingerly made my way down the hospital hallway to a breastfeeding class that night.  

The pain from the glass and the leg cramp soon went away and 10 years and 2 months passed by with me recalling that incident every now and again.  It was so painful that I never forgot it.  Last October I went too quickly down our carpeted stairs in sock feet, and I slipped, banging the arch of my foot into the bottom piece of wood on a chair at the foot of the stairs.  I had a little blood blister, and my arch was sore but felt better in a couple of days.  About 3 weeks later I started having a horrible stabbing pain in my left foot, and I saw a soft lump form.  The lump gradually went away.  I rested and iced my foot.  I thought maybe I'd pinched a nerve as well from using a rolling pin to massage my foot with Ella (who was doing that for some heel pain at the suggestion of the podiatrist). 

For 6 months I was aware that something wasn't quite right with the left arch, but the stabbing pains went away, and I wore good shoes all winter, so all was well until spring came.  I wear walking boots and house-shoes most of the time in North Yorkshire, so when the weather turned, bare feet, flip-flops, and flats felt so fun.  But the night before Easter my stabbing pain was back, and I was in tears Easter Sunday as each step felt like stepping on a knife.  I spent our Easter holiday get-away in Whitby sitting on the sidelines, icing my foot and taking ibuprofen.  I assumed that maybe all this pain was plantar fasciitis since it came in the wake of a lot of bad footwear choices.  For months, I iced and stretched and rested and iced and stretched some more.  I bought insoles.  I paid the most I've ever paid for running shoes with good support.  I missed out on family walks.  It would seem to get better, and then the pain would be really bad again.

Sitting at Robin Hood's Bay while the rest of my family played on the beach

Since our family vacation to Scotland at the end of August, it has been horrible.  I've missed walking around town, dropping by friend's houses, taking Ella on her birthday party outing.  September felt particularly discouraging, as after 6 months I was feeling like this was my life now.  

Trying not to let the crutches slow me down

One Wednesday night at our church gathering an army doctor friend examined my foot, and as I was pointing out where exactly the pain was we both felt a small bump.  He said he really thought it didn't sound like plantar fasciitis and looked up the name of a couple of orthopedic surgeons I could call.  It felt like such a lifeline.  Because I wasn't sure about the plantar fasciitis anymore either; I just knew I needed someone to look inside my foot and see what was going on and feeling that bump in the exact place of the pain felt like such a good starting point.  

We fast forward through the initial guess about what it could be, which still didn't have the nicest prognosis, to the ultrasound scan where the doctor and K.J. and I were both surprised to see that my plantar fascia looked absolutely fine.  There was just something there that shouldn't be, most likely a piece of glass.  

Are you kidding me?

Since having a piece of glass embedded in your foot isn't really the type of thing likely to happen without noticing, we really think it's from that broken glass in Kentucky all those years ago.  It's the only time I've stepped on glass, and it was embedded in my foot.  It obviously formed some kind of protective barrier that was dislodged when my foot hit the chair last year.  Ever since it has moved a bit, sometimes hitting all the most sensitive nerves in my foot causing reverberating pain when I put my weight on it.  It's so crazy that something so small, so normal, so routine, could have been the cause of such pain and frustration for so many months.  Yet, I am so overwhelmingly grateful that this is the case!  After living with chronic pain for 7 months, I'm a little hesitant to believe it's all over, but as long as the wound heals well, it should be a distant memory in another few months.  

Moral of the story?  Don't be lazy.  Sweep up your broken glass, or it might come back to haunt you. 

This morning I read Psalm 20-21, and this verse stands out as the cry of my heart this morning:  "You have given him his heart's desire and have not denied the request of his lips."   Here's to a future of walking and being so grateful for every step.