Ledderhose Moribus

I got my first plantar fibroma around age 10.
The parts I remember are: the scary, painful biopsy; the doctors counting me down from 10 to 1 till unconscious to perform the surgery, then sucking on ice cubes they gave me to help wake up afterward. My foot feeling swollen, numb, scary.
Waiting at my aunt Carol’s house after the surgery, in the attic with the dolls. Who knows why I had to go there post-surgery? No explanation of what the “bump” was or why it needed to be cut off, other than, it’s not cancerous. It’s benign.

A couple decades of feeling uncomfortable, off balance, and desperate to stop walking every time I was walking, which was all the time in New York.

I had another surgery in 2014, in the summer. A Manhattan podiatrist donated a “free surgery” to me, when I wandered in, saying how no one would help me. Podiatrists kept poo-pooing me, saying it was nothing, “take ibuprofen (or more) of it, or use ice/heat, or get special shoe inserts. Did all that stuff. Hips went off balance. Begin pinchy feeling behind neck, wings, and terribly tight thigh… avoiding the main locus of fibroma, now swirled and encased in scar tissue. (then encased in terrible, rotting scar tissue). Why the fuck do my feet stink so bad? I used Lysol on them at work. I shoved paper towels in my shoes. Once I put one of my favorite low-heel pumps in a bucket of litter because someone on line says it took away the smell. That’s sad that I really did it. And I had to throw both shoes away afterwards, of course. If litter removed smells, my cat’s litter box wouldn’t torment me daily as it does from the back of the kitchen area (by the trash).

I was living with Jay, married to him at my second surgery. The pain killers erase all memories of the recovery except him being mad at me for being high.

At age 47, I’ve been using a surgical blade (small, obviously) to shave callous and dead skin from the bottoms and sides of my feet almost EVERY DAY FOR YEARS, at least 2 years (do you know how much shavings that is???) and I found the baby bumps. They DO come as bumps or lines. They grow along all the lines, like knots and twists on a telephone wire. I’ve been shaving, shaving, shaving (skills based on youtube videos of podiatrists debride and cleaning out foot ulcers of diabetic feet), and believe me, there’s NO FEELING in dead tissue. The bumps are in dead tissue, but sometimes shaving them off— it bleeds. I found ‘near’ ulcers under the front pads, under very thick callouses. I found out 25% of my feet were dead, and removable.

I’ve never been a barefoot person, always a sock person. But now I’m a person who will not walk AT ALL if I don’t keep up with these nodules, these invaders, these growing scars that live among the children of the corns. Yes, I had a wart, too. Still shaving that area, and finding more scar tissue and tiny circles that bleed. Strips of nonsense.
I want to walk. I used to run! (before the scarification proliferation cancelled that hobby circa 1999). If I wouldn’t have gone verbally ballistic at work in April (or was in March?), I would still be sitting all the time. I was sitting more and more, eating candy, getting crazy fat (for me). I never had even a pinch or squeeze of waist fat before, and I do know. So I had to get up and on my feet again. But it turns out they’re disintegrating beneath me. I believe there’s real foot underneath, though, and won’t stop shaving until I can stand properly, and not hobble around.