I’m someone who loves routine, so, as lovely as the holidays were, I was pretty excited once school started up again. My running kind of took a nosedive in 2016 (an otherwise stellar year) and I want to leave the warts behind, get back on a training schedule, and kick some butt in 2017. It’s ON!
I have the marathon to look forward to in June, plenty of time and motivation to train for it. Two weeks ago I saw a podiatrist for these damn warts. The kids had just gotten back in school after the long break and I was eager to be back on a regular running schedule. Dr Foot thought the best thing would be to treat the warts with cantharidin, which causes blisters to form underneath which then push the warts toward the surface of the skin and send them on their way.
He puts it on, tells me to keep them dry and bandaged for the next day and a half, and come back in two weeks to see how they’re doing. I ask when I can run again and he says I can do whatever feels okay. This was on a Tuesday, so I figure I’ll be running again on Thursday, maybe Friday at the latest.
Uh, not sure why I didn’t see this coming, but three large festering blisters on the soles of your feet actually really fucking hurt. This should not have come as a surprise. Thursday I can barely stand. Friday I am painfully hobbling around. Saturday I am considerably improved. Sunday I feel fine and get a five mile run in. Monday is Martin Luther King Day and we have some family time, and I plan to go on runs every day for the rest of the week, because the kids will be back in school and my feet actually feel good, for the first time in forever.*
My plans. They are thwarted. Again. Both my kids got sick. Lucy got it way worse than Dash, but they were both out most of the week. In seven days, I’d planned to run four or five times, and ended up going once. Very frustrating because my feet were so much better, and it was decent weather, and I am not really a homebody, so being stuck in the house made me a little stir crazy. Nothing much I can do about any of that, so I just power through and make it to the weekend, thinking they’ll definitely be back in school Monday, and I’m going to run run run all week. Maybe five days in a row! Just gonna pop in the podiatrist’s office on Tuesday morning, he’ll say my feet look great, maybe I’ll even bring my running shoes with me and run right out the door. My kids are in school and my feet don’t hurt and nothing can stop me now!
Yeah, no. Monday Lucy is still sick and needs to stay home. Rich was able to come home early enough to stay with her while I took Dash to dance class, so I did manage to get a short run in while my little guy was dancing his wart-free feet off. Tuesday Lucy is well enough for school, and I go to the podiatrist. thinking that even though you can still see three giant plantar warts on my feet, they feel so good that Dr Foot will just say everything’s great and send me on my way. Nope again. He says they are 20% smaller, which is good progress, and we can either continue treatment with OTC remedies or do the fun blister thing again, and what do I want to do? And though it killed me to have to say it, I decide on another round of blister fun since I spent about a year doing OTC stuff only to end up here.
So here I am, Wednesday afternoon, sitting here with the padded bandages on my feet, expecting to be in blistering pain for at least the next day or two. Dr Foot said it might not be as bad this time since he didn’t have to put as much on, but at least this time I’m expecting to be on the disabled list until Saturday, so if I feel better sooner it will feel like a bonus. I did get the added benefit of learning that warts are also called Verucas, and cantharidin is also called Beetlejuice. So it’s a pretty epic battle happening on my feet right now.
Next week, my feet will be better, my kids will be in school, and I will run run run maybe even every day. That’s definitely going to happen LALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU LALALALA
*apologies if that song is now stuck in your head like it was in mine for most of 2014
