Yes I know this episode of He Said, She Said is long overdue. But here it is. Don't forget to check out what He Said.
As I cornered around the garage, running as fast as my grubby little 8-year-old bare feet would take me, I was trying to catch one of the other kids in our late night game of Tag.
It was early September slightly past dusk. Since I was younger than everyone else, of course I was “IT” more often than not.
As I sped across the front of our garage apron, I felt a fast tug on my left foot. No pain, but I instantly knew something was wrong, bad wrong. I belted out one of those nightmarish kid’s screams that pierced the neighborhood and everyone’s eardrums. Although there still wasn’t any pain, I could just “feel” something very wrong with the bottom of my toe. I hobbled as fast as possible to the inside of the house to find solace.
As I went running into the kitchen leaving a trail of blood from my Dad’s metal tool drawer that he had absently left on the garage apron, I saw Mom come flying around the corner clearly understanding those types of screams do not come with just some kiddy type drama.
My brother Mark also came running in. Which I found odd since he despised me since I had taken his “baby of the family” moniker away from him when he was four. It had only been one week since Mark’s own foot had been cut pretty severely under the bridge when he stepped on a piece of glass.
I sat down at one of the chairs and pulled my left foot up to see what the damage actually was. Mark knelt down just about the time I brought up my foot. That’s when all three of us noticed that the entire bottom half of my big toe was…gone. Where the meatiest portion of the bottom of the big toe should have been was only a gaping open wound exposed all the way to the bone of my toe. The blood was quickly forming a nice puddle on the floor when Mark gasped out an “Oh My God” before Mom shushed him back into silence.
The flurry of activity next gets a little blurred with a fading memory. My parents wrapped my foot as tightly as possible, but the blood just kept soaking through. Mom held me in her lap while Dad floored the car to drive to the nearest doctor’s office.
Unfortunately the car was nearly empty on gas and neither Mom nor Dad had any cash. This was long before the days of ATM’s and debit cards. The local gas station was a couple miles down the road. Although Harold, the owner was our neighbor, we didn’t know him well. Dad had Harold fill the tank up “just enough” and THEN told him that he had no money and was rushing me to the doctor. Harold waved him along knowing Dad would pay him as soon as possible. I think about that decision now and then. My parents both were afraid that I was bleeding to death and Dad was caught in a place of telling Harold first and risk not being able to get gas or wait until the car was filled and fess up and tell Harold he would pay him as soon as he could. He chose the latter, probably just too afraid that Harold would say no and he would have no way to get me help as soon as possible. Now and again I think about what must have been running through his mind. I don’t like to think that he was scared for me, but yet I know he was, they both were.
I remember my parents rushing me through a crowded doctor’s office. As best as I can recall, the doctor must have gotten the bleeding under control and then told my parents to take me to the hospital. Since I was still grubby and dirty and the crisis was somewhat calmed, they took me home first to clean me up a bit. I seem to remember Mom putting a nice orange dress on me before we went to the hospital.
Back in the 60’s hospitals weren’t exactly patient or family friendly. They wheeled me away from my parents into a cold examination room, where a young intern unwrapped my toe and began to “numb” it all around with about five shots on what was quickly becoming a very painful toe. He cleaned the wound as much as possible and then he wrapped it up with cotton, and no ointment to prevent the cotton from binding directly into the wound.
The next morning, before my scheduled surgery, you could have heard my screams throughout the all of Indianapolis as they kept trying to soak my toe to extract the cotton the should-have-worked-flipping-burgers-intern had stupidly wrapped tightly the night before. I can vividly remember every detail.
When they finished, they put me on a gurney to head to surgery to graft some skin from my stomach to cover the open toe. Mom and Dad tried to keep up, but hospital staff back in those days didn’t much care if a parent had the time to comfort a scared little girl still crying in pain. I remember the mask over my face and the instant out of consciousness.
Back in 1967, children under 14 were not allowed in the patient rooms and visiting hours, even for parents were very limited. The room I shared the next 10 days with two to three other little girls was the only place I was allowed. There was Mary, who was in a full body cast after she had been hit by a car. There was Jill, a red-headed little girl. I remember asking my mom what was wrong with her and she told me she had leukemia. I knew that Jill was not going to live. Nancy was a girl in another room that would come visit. Her hair was a mess because she had a broken neck and a trac tube. Nancy and her family had been in a horrible car accident. At the accident scene, the medics had moved Nancy away from her parents as they announced that she was dead. A few minutes later one of them heard her gurgling.
So I could do nothing but lay in the bed the entire time. They only time I was even allowed to sit in a chair was when they would change the bed sheet. Twice a day, they would give me an antibiotic shot in my scrawny little legs which felt like they were driving the needle into the bone. Then they would remove the needle from the syringe and give me the empty container to play with. You sure don’t see that happening today.
School had just started before the accident, so my third grade teacher had all the kids create get well cards for me. To this day we laugh about the one that had a big toe drawn on the front along with the words, “Oh Dear Toe”.
On the 10th day, the surgeon came in to remove the stitches. He was not gentle as he cut and yanked the threads from my sore toe and stomach. He complained to my mom that I was being a baby. He was lucky he made it out of the room with all his teeth. After the stitches were gone, the doc took off down the hallway. I can still remember my mom running after him and her yelling, “When can she go home?” He casually said, “I guess today.” If she hadn’t asked, I wonder if I would still be there.
Mom was so excited as she was helping me get dressed and as I slipped out of bed for the first time in 10 days, I stood on my good leg and I promptly hit the floor feeling my weakened leg muscle give out. I can remember how scared I was because I didn’t understand that not using or exercising those tiny little girl calf muscles meant my good leg was just not strong enough to support my weight.
I still can’t believe how ridiculously stupid the medical profession was back then. Not only was it completely unnecessary to keep me in the hospital that long, but to not even have me stand or use my right leg for 10 days???
Today, the scar on my toe still looks pretty nasty and you can feel the bone of my toe hiding just beneath a thin layer of skin.
On a positive note, I continue to use my “ugly toe” as we call it as a method to irritate my nieces and nephews. Our family gatherings are fairly large and someone is always lying on the floor. I wait till they least suspect it and take my bare toe and walk past them casually and then quick as a wink I move my toe to their lips and scream, “Ugly Toe Kiss”. The victim tries to wipe away the leftover toe feeling while the rest of us get a good laugh.
Posts
