The Radical Spectrum of Foot Care

About a week ago I had to go to a podiatrist to have a minor surgical procedure on my big toe. I thought about writing then about the whacky game-show host style antics of the doctor and how his weird spastic SNL subliminal-man way of speaking made me a tad uneasy about having him hack into my foot with a scalpel. But for some reason I didn’t post. I don’t know maybe I didn’t think it was enough of a story.

Today I had to go to a different podiatrist office for a follow up visit because Dr. Giggles was out of town. Little did I know that there could be things far spookier in regards to area podiatrists than having a hyper-active foot fixer. At least Dr. Giggles’ office was nice and clean, professional, and in a respectable medical office-complex.

The place I was sent today was in a run-down little house in Falls Church, the kind of place kids probably tell ghost-stories about, the kind of house where no one has the guts to go on Halloween. The waiting room was a sparse converted living room with stacks of long out-dated magazines, an ancient rattling air-conditioner, and it smelled like well…feet. As I sat waiting for my turn with the Doc, flipping through magazines about GW’s first election(!) my ears were assaulted every two minutes or so by a loud electronic squelch of unknown origin. I was finally led into an examination room by the receptionist and told to take off my shoes and get into the chair. Then I was left alone with a “the doctor will be in shortly.”

I got up in the chair, toes pointed skyward and took in the room around me. It was a nightmare. It was basically an empty off-white room save the examination chair and a night-stand with five or six gummed up sticky bottles of god-knows-what on top. The walls, floor, and doors were covered in ambiguous stains. What little medical equipment there was there was either disconnected or in the middle of being taken apart and it all looked like it had been bought at the 66 Yard Sale. My unease grew as my imagination ran rampant conjuring up all kinds of scenarios that could explain the old mystery stains. Did someone’s foot explode in here? And why was no effort made to clean it up?

Then I thought about the Joker, you know from Batman. This is the kind of hole-in-the-wall Doctor’s office that the Joker would have gone to if he had feet problems instead of face problems. A nasty, underworld, foot quack probably addicted to some kind of pain-killing gas. Maybe mobsters use this place for some under-the-table bullet extractions? Or maybe this Doctor is actually a mad-foot-scientist and all these stains are the built-up splooge from years of trying to sew human feet onto house-cats?

Anyway, the Doc came in to see me and turned out to be a nice enough chap. He said my foot was healing nicely and sent me on my way. I left there happy that I didn’t need further work done in that gross house-of-horrors but also with an appreciation of the radical spectrum of foot-care options in our area. I mean who actually goes to this place for regular foot treatment? I pity them.

Luckily Dr. Giggles gets back from his foot fact-finding mission in Poland in two weeks and I can return to a 21st century doctor’s office for my final follow-up. I’ll take a clean environment and stupid jokes over stains and broken equipment any day.

Originally published on September 16, 2005.

This is one of my favorite posts.