Sunday, December 2, 2007

The human body is crap part II

Considering the state of Miss R's ankle at the moment, I thought it would be pertinant of me to elaborate on my own unfortunate ankles.

I was born with club feet. There, I said it. Now let me explain what effect that has had on my life.

From what I can understand, I had an operation when I was about 6 months old to rectify the problem. Obviously, it was either that, or spend the first 12 years of my life in calipers. The operation involved the removal of the shortened muscle tissue of my calves, as well as numerous tendons and other stuff. The result? Well, yes, my feet do kinda lay flat now, I can wear normal shoes, walk, run and jump etc but I have a very limited range of motion in my ankles. The other thing is I have not the nicest looking legs in the world. More to the point, they look like little sticks. I don't care, really, never have. Once people see the scars on my feet they tend to understand.

I sprain my ankles at least once a month, probably more. Just muscles though, not ligaments, which goes away after a couple of days. But I went to a GP when I was about 20 years old to get to bottom as to why I was spraining my ankles all the time as I got sick of it. So I had some x-rays taken, at which point the GP said something along the lines of "ummmm, I've never seen this before. Ummm, looks like your bones have fused together. I can't help you I'm sorry." So I went back to the surgeon who operated on me. He said that he could do another operation whereby my feet would lay even flatter, but it wouldn't alter it very drasticially. So I didn't bother. So I live with it, and move on. What else can I do?

If my parents had elected to go the caliper route, I would have quite normal looking legs by now I dare say, but at what cost of wearing calipers for 12 years?? Oh the bullying would've been monumental!

I have only ever seen one other person who had obviously had the same operation. She was at the old gym I used to go to, and you could tell just by looking at her legs that something was amiss. However, and this is what touched me greatly, she had gone and got tattoos all over her calves as if to say "screw it, this is who I am." Good on you.

2 comments:

Dr. J said...

Well your feet have some mighty cool scars which are pretty obvious, but honestly?- I never noticed anything particularly different with your legs at all.

Stone Free said...

Probably because you never saw me in shorts.

Apparently in the UK I am classed as 'disabled' and can claim all sorts of benefits! Damn, I wish I had known that whilst I was over there.