Doctors are Sadists

My left foot has been troubling me for a couple of years now. Last Friday I was finally able to see a foot specialist. I'm trying to make up my mind if he's some kind of sick, twisted fiend.

The visit began with a simple visual examination of the foot. Then he began pressing it, once here, once there, at different points on and around the ankle. "Does this hurt? How about here? Here?" he would ask as he prodded. Each time it hurt, but not terribly.

"Does this hurt?" he eventually asked, bending my foot sharply towards my shin bone. 

That hurt. Man, did it hurt. But did that stop him? Nope. He pulled the foot back away from my leg, a hundred eighty degrees from the first way he bent it. "How about this?" he asked clinically.

Can't you tell? I'm tapping out like a professional wrestler. "Yes," I replied instead through clenched teeth.

"This?" he truncated his question as he wrenched the foot sideways. "Yes," I affirmed in a whimper.

I'm not sure he had to do all that. I think that because he seemed to be enjoying himself far too much. Did you have a fight before you left the house this morning, doc?

Impressions on an MRI

Yesterday morning, as I related to one and all, I had an MRI of my foot done. Although I have had an MRI before, it was of my head. It showed nothing.

There: I beat every one of you to the punchline.

The main difference with a foot exam is that I wasn't put all the way into the machine. That actually felt more odd than when I was slipped into the unit head first back in 2016. I was surrounded by the thing then. With my foot, I was aimed in backwards, so to speak, so that the top half of me was outside. It gave me the vague feeling of being swallowed up. Then too, the ceiling above where I lay had a tranquil landscape for me to gaze upon. Unfortunately it caused me to feel like I was experiencing Edward G. Robinson's dying scene from Soylent Green. I have felt more mentally comfortable.

On top of that, the television in the men's change room (I had to put on a hospital gown for the procedure) had a readout in the upper corner which claimed that it was Saturday, August 18, at 8:17 AM. That too made me less than confident in the proceedings.

Physically, I felt as though I were swaying mildly all through the MRI. The tech said that might have been a side affect of the procedure, as the MRI was set at one and a half times the pull of the Earth's gravity. That, she said, can throw off the patient's equilibrium. 

Perhaps. But it made it that much harder to keep my damn foot immobile for the 40 minutes or so the exam took. 

Ah well. She told me, the tech, that is, that they got a good solid look at the ankle. So come on now, Doc, let me know what ails me.