Swollen Feet

My feet are swollen. Let’s start with that. Let’s continue with the fact that I am 6 foot 7 inches and three years ago my father almost died from an aortic dissection. Whenever I Google “swollen feet,” WebMD tells me that I am going to die or possibly that I am already dead, and asks me why I didn’t report to New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist like yesterday. WebMD also tells me that swollen feet could be a sign of complications with my pregnancy. And I don’t have a primary care doctor because I am young and young people don’t get sick. Young people shouldn’t have swollen feet.

I had never noticed people’s ankles before, but now that’s really all I look at. I look at ankles and feel bad about how my left foot is so bulbous that you can barely see the tiny little bump where there should be a rather noticeable bone sticking through the skin. I am hopelessly self conscious about my feet, but am also good at living in denial, everyday asking God (if there is a God) to just fucking fix this on his/her own so that I don’t have to actually go in and find out that my ever nearing death is in fact imminent. All of this was true, until yesterday, when I finally dragged myself into CityMD to get help.

Now if you happen to know of CityMD, I know what you are thinking: CityMD is an urgent care provider that deals with broken bones and strep throat. All you can possibly hope that they’ll be able to do for your swollen feet is to refer you to a specialist. Why not just go about trying to find the specialist yourself and save the forty dollar co-pay. Also, you should probably go and get a yearly physical with your primary care doctor. You don’t have a primary care doctor? You should get one. You should really get a primary care doctor. They’d be able to help you with this kind of thing. What are you, stupid or something?

Neither the technician that took my medical history (and told me that he thinks I have high blood pressure, which is a new fun thing) nor the doctor, who came and looked at my foot and then joked out in the hallway with the other nurses (“Any of you have any foot fetishes?”) were nearly this blunt with me, but they nonetheless sang a similar tune. “We can’t fix this here but also why haven’t you gotten this fixed by now? What is wrong with you?”

“Well, here’s the thing, doc. I have a problem with trying to control things in my life. I want to feel like I control things that I could not possibly control. This is why, on the infrequent occasion that I go to social engagements, I spend most of the preceding day coming up with things to talk about that will be both inoffensive and reveal as little about my actual self as possible. This is why, if I am at a social event for too long, I make up an excuse about how I am drunk/tired/have an early call time, so that I can return to the safety of my apartment, and my bed, and my Netflix. This is also why I don’t go to doctors, because I can’t predict what they are going to say due to the very nature of why I am going to see them in the first place: they know more than me. So instead I just don’t go. I ask God (if there is a God) to just fix it for me, or alternatively, let me die. (I have not at all made peace with death. This is more something that I say to myself in passing. But it’s a conversation with myself that I have had on multiple occasions.)”

When I was nine years old my family moved to Almaty, Kazakhstan, which meant that I had to bid farewell to the comfort of Rockville, Maryland, Green Acres School, and all of my friends for the next two years. I had agreed that I was on board with this plan, but had immediate buyers remorse and as hard as I tried to will it otherwise, eventually the last day of school came, and I had to say goodbye. I was going to say goodbye to my home, and then go with my two best friends to see a DC United game and then have a sleep over. But of course, things in life that are actually important never go exactly as planned, and I put a massive wrinkle in my own heroic send off by, at about 10:30 am, vomiting right next to the third grade class hamster cage. The teachers noticed. I was sent to the office. My mother was called. She came to pick me up.

A modicum of clemency was eventually granted, and I was allowed to return for the rest of the school day, but the plans for the soccer game and sleep over had to be scrapped. I was sick. Or at least I might be.

That was nineteen years ago, and for nineteen years I have regretted that I didn’t make it to the bathroom. I could have taken care of the situation and then returned to the festivities of the day, with no-one else any the wiser, and therefore under no obligation to do anything about it. Continue as normal. As you were. Amen.

I’ve never checked myself into hospice, and hopefully won’t need to for a very long time, but yesterday morning felt like I was preparing for a life changing event and I packed a bag to bring with me accordingly. And I knew, as I stepped out of my apartment building and began the fifteen minute walk to the Williamsburg CityMD that I wouldn’t be coming back to my apartment any time soon. I was going to the office all over again. I had been on the run for long enough, and was finally turning myself in.

I’m fine. Or at least I’m not dying tomorrow. More tests have to be done. I have to see specialists. It’s going to cost money. I wish I could say that this moment is a turning point. That after this I will be more likely to seek help, but I know myself well enough to be skeptical. I’m not good at lying to other people but I’m a fucking pro at lying to myself, and will probably keep lying if it means that I don’t have to be a burden. Keep lying so that I seem healthy. So I seem happy. So I seem whole.