Your Foot Is a Terrible Thing to Waste

Have you ever broken a bone, or believed that your bone was more ok than it really was? After breaking my foot in March, requiring surgery and pins to hold the bones together, two weeks on I began relaxing and walking around with my black boot brace on. I was confident, the doc liked the xray, so tra-la-la. Oh boy.

Yesterday hit me like a ton of bricks. The weight I’d put on the foot by all of that boot walking has caused the stitches not to heal…so I’ve been ordered by the doctor to use crutches again and bear only half weight.

The hard part is that with crutches you can’t carry anything. I didn’t realize how many things I have to carry…now the only thing is the backpack I can strap to my back. I got caught last week hobbling down the sidewalk when my girlfriend’s daughter spotted me, crutchless, and ratted me out. Then I had hell to pay, Mary doesn’t like people who don’t follow doctor’s orders to the letter. I got in big trouble.

The other bad thing about this was that I had two trips I had to cancel as a result of my foot break. First I was going to India on a luxury trip, NOT, then I had to beg off an invitation to go to Estonia and Latvia. Fortunately, my cousin Steve jumped in and went on the trip, so at least we got to cover it on GoNOMAD. But you don’t think about how vulnerable you are if you have a broken bone and are traveling all around with a bunch of travel writers. You need to be mobile or forget it!

There is a silver lining, of course. I reached out to a pack of friends to help me pack up and move my office next week, and got a positive response. Yes, you can ask, and yes, people do want to help. Thank God!