I have an awesome idea, but there is some background information that I have to share first, so bear with me for a moment. I apologize if any of this is TMI, but it’s worth the payoff. Trust me.
Over the past few weeks walking has become more and more painful. Several months ago I got what felt like a splinter in the bottom of my foot that I could not find in order to remove it. Since I couldn’t find it, I tried to ignore it. As the weeks progressed, it began to hurt more and more. I tried exploratory self-surgery with a needle and an X-acto knife (something I do not recommend without large quantities of hard liquor) but had no success.
Since I am an average human male, the thought of going to the doctor never even entered my mind. “I’ll just learn to deal with it,” said I. “It’ll go away eventually.” Oddly enough, it not only failed to go away, it actually got worse. I began to limp. The other foot began to hurt, since I was overcompensating for the painful one. I was, in a word, crippled.
It got so bad this past weekend that when my wife firmly suggested that I finally visit the doctor, I gave in. I told the doc I either had a tumor or an alien implant, something which he didn’t seem to find as amusing as I did. His diagnosis? I have a corn.
Who the hell gets corns? I thought it was reserved for old ladies with bunions and walkers. Since this initial assessment was obviously wrong, I did some research. A corn is formed thusly:
1. Something irritates the foot, whether a splinter or a blister or the inside of your shoe.
2. The body reacts by hardening the skin around the irritation, forming a small keratin nodule.
3. This nodule further irritates the foot, resulting in more hardening of the skin.
4. The cycle (2 - 3) repeats.
You know what that sounds like? It’s exactly the way a pearl is formed!
Basically, I am forming a human pearl inside my foot. How cool is that?
Of course, I’m not sure what to do with it. My first impulse, of course, was to get rid of this irritating little Nodule of Pain and Suffering, but now I’m not so sure. You wouldn’t dissolve a pearl, would you? For some reason, when I offered to put it on a necklace and present it to my wife, she was less than enthusiastic.
I’m thinking eBay.
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