My problems begin and end with my feet right now.

Sometimes I think I'm in a season where I'm so apt to rush and panic and try to do All The Things that there is no way for me to slow down. I physically cannot because then tasks won't get completed. Lately, I've had to let a lot (a LOT) go. 

About two months ago, I noticed I had a small toenail fungus on my nail (gross but stay with me). This has happened once before and, that time, I went through multiple topicals and homeopathic remedies and nothing worked. Finally, I went to the doctor via telehealth in 2020 and she prescribed me an oral pill that went into your bloodstream and destroyed the fungus from within. 90 days of taking a pill every morning, they make you take a pregnancy test before you start it, and you have to get bloodwork halfway through to make sure your liver is still functioning properly. Extreme right? Well that was 5 years ago and I went to the doctor two months ago for annual bloodwork, I mentioned the fungus and she gave me the same medication again. Obviously, different doctor, different state but same idea. I started taking it and within a week, I noticed my feet were aching constantly. Like, unexplained muscle pain. I assumed it was from some not-so-supportive shoes I'd been wearing but nothing actually made it better. I was miserable. I would soak them, elevate them, whatever. They weren't swollen or anything. Scott assumed I had some really tight muscles so he massaged my calves and that really hurt and did kind of loosen things up but it never actually got better. Sandals hurt, sneakers hurt, bare feet on the floor hurt the most. 

At some point, two weeks ago, I realized it could be the medication I'd been taking. I stopped taking it. My feet stopped hurting within the day. 

I think I do have a really tight muscle in my heel but my feet don't ache anymore. My doctor asked me last week to go back in (today) to get the liver function test done and I was like "oh I stopped taking it" and I wrote a brief sentence about the foot pain as a side effect and she as just like "okay you don't need the test then". No "HMMM that's really weird". Scott had told me weeks ago that I should legitimately go to the doctor if my feet hurt that bad. I was like "What would they even do? Nothing. They would do absolutely nothing." Which is exactly what happened anyway. 

So as I'm getting over the Foot Pain Incident, and as the fungus is pretty much gone anyway because I did take 5-6 weeks of pills (I will just continue on with tea tree oil), I've also been dealing with a plantar's wart. It's honestly been there for awhile and last spring the dermatologist gave me a medication to put on it that "kills it from within" instead of an invasive procedure. I used it for a bit, it got a lot better, so I stopped but it definitely came back. The medication I have is now expired so I renewed the prescription and started using it again. My advice: go to a doctor and don't use those wart remover patches from the store. They make it a much more painful process. 

So, as I'm soaking my feet in magnesium epsom salt last week, I got one of those rasps to take care of dead skin. I didn't feel like I should go get a pedicure with the fungus situation, you know? (100% that's how I got it in the first place back in 2018.) Well, the rasp slipped and I grated my foot. Literally, a bleeding cut on the side of my foot. It rubbed on everything. Every shoe, every sandal, it burned like crazy when wet. I ended up buying some New Skin spray to cover it and that was an experience. I had a gauzy bandage over it Thursday and Friday just so I could walk in shoes. By midday Friday it felt so much better and that's good because I had to wear heels to the regimental ball on Friday night. By the absolute grace of God alone, the shoes I had didn't rub in that spot. 

Anyway, that's been the last few weeks and I can't help but think in the normal season of PCS panic (we don't know when/where we'll be living yet in two months), this has forced me to physcially slow down and I think that's by design.