![Photo courtesy of veggiesosage [Flickr]](http://www.thepracticalnerd.com/wp-content/uploads//2010/06/4672865928_a34861996a.jpg "Photo courtesy of veggiesosage [Flickr]")
[Not my leg.]
When was the last time you thought about how great walking is? It’s an incredible gift, isn’t it? You probably aren’t really thinking about it much. Allow me to explain.
I have a significant number of plantars warts on my right foot. Since starting my job, I’ve been going to the corporate clinic to have them treated. I’ve had them for nearly 10 years and nothing has gotten rid of them. I had only gone one other time to a doctor to work on them, and it cost me several hundred dollars, so I never went back for follow-up. This clinic is part of our company and it only costs $10 and appointment. It’s a sweet deal, and I want to be able to be barefoot and confident when I hit the Hawaiian islands in October. Two weeks ago, I had treatment #3.
For those who don’t know how you get rid of warts, basically you take a scalpel and cut off all the calloused skin protecting the wart. Then you freeze the crap out of the suckers so that the virus dies. Because mine are so old, they run pretty deep, so this process usually involves a little bit of blood and a fair amount of pain. The freezing part basically feels like getting stabbed in the foot the longer it goes on.
So I usually walk out of the doctor’s office with what somewhat amounts to several open wounds on the bottom and side of my foot. I limp for a day or two, and then it’s fine. But after treatment #3, I noticed the pain was getting worse. We had bandaged up the foot because it had bled quite a bit, and in the evening, I decided to peel back the bandage to check out the damage. To my surprise, I noticed that a large blood blister had begun to form right on the bottom of my foot. This blister would eventually swell to the size of a quarter and jut out about 1 cm off the bottom of my foot.
All right, you can stop shuddering. It’s not that gross.
Anyhoo, I was able to limp home that night, but when I woke up in the morning, it had swelled so much that I could not physically walk on my foot. I could hop along on my heel, but my heel bone didn’t like that too much. So, I had to bust out my dad’s old crutches and rely on those for four days, until the swelling went down enough that I could limp on it.
During that time, I realized what a gift the ability to walk really is. It’s one of those “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”-type abilities. All of a sudden, what was once a minor activity turned into a big project:
-
Going upstairs to use the bathroom or cook
-
Walk to and from the bathroom at work (I drink a lot of water at work, so this one is pretty significant to me)
-
Going down a flight of stairs to get a cup of water at work
-
Getting groceries
-
Just stopping at a store to pick up something
-
Getting food and drink from my kitchen area to my living room area
-
Driving anywhere
All of these things became ten times more difficult, just because I couldn’t put weight on one of my feet. It’s amazing the things you don’t think of as gifts until they are taken from you. Of course, people in wheelchairs or young babies who still haven’t figured it out know the frustration caused by not being able to walk. But the rest of us don’t always appreciate that.
Think about the different abilities and gifts that you have been given that you may not even think about anymore. A few generations ago, some of these gifts weren’t even there:
-
The ability to run down to the store and pick up food, rather than relying on your own harvest or hunting skills
-
The ability to set foot on any part of the world within 24 hours or so
-
The ability to propel a car many miles using just your foot
-
Access to millions of computers and databases through the Internet
-
The control over the atmosphere and environment in your house, regardless of the weather outside
-
Being able to walk to the faucet and grab a drink of clean, fresh water whenever you feel like
And these are just a few. Take a little time to appreciate the little joys in life instead of complaining about the rest of it. Oh, and I had my 4th treatment yesterday, and it looks like another blister is forming. I guess I’ll be really appreciative once this ordeal is over…
Tom is an entrepreneur and freelance writer, working out of his apartment full-time, or wherever he feels like taking his laptop. He doesn't take long European vacations or blogs on the beach. He's an Average Joe that took control of his life. He wants you to do the same.
