Lynn, the physical therapist who showed up to do my post-hip replacement eval was, to put it politely, not my cup of tea. So, the next day, I called the office and asked for someone else. Someone fun. Someone I could (maybe) flirt with. Two days later, Bob knocked on my door.
Dress shirt, nice tie, cuffed trousers, and well-loved but still gorgeous woven tassel loafers (“Florsheim,” he replied to my “nice shoes, dude”). Over that, a white coat with his name embroidered and more of an old-fashioned house-call satchel than the modern shoulder totes his Gen Z colleagues use.
Add to that a beach ball belly straight out of a cardiologist’s night terror. Doctor Bob looked for all the world like he belonged behind the counter of my grandmother’s Humboldt, Iowa pharmacy, not hauling it all over creation, including, more than likely, Lakewood Ranch.
He had me sit on the chaise while he took my vitals, then noted while gesturing out my window, “That’s a really dangerous intersection you have there.”
“Oh, my god, don’t I know it.”
It really is, and the entrance to my trailer park is right at the start of the northbound turn lane. How many times I’ve cursed out idiots behind me, “I live here, a**hole!” while they honk and gesture and threaten to clip my passenger side mirror or take out the front quarter panel so I’ll have to bandage it up with automotive duct tape to match the driver’s side rear.
“There was a really bad one just as I turned in,” Bob said.
“Seriously?” I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s been raining every day since I got home.
“It was just awful. A roll of toilet paper …” I put my fists to my face and widened my eyes in mock horror. “… Got caught in the crack.”
Good one, Bob. I can match that.
“Y’know, Bob, one day I asked my psychoanalyst if he’d given any consideration to the Freudian ramifications that a woman with a urostomy can pee standing upright like a man.”
Bob snorted softly. We’ll see what he comes up with on Monday.
***
“You need to stand straight on your left leg,” he said after scratching off everything on Lynn’s list, leaving me with heel-toe lifts, march-in-place, and a lateral side step weight shift move I immediately adapted into a bachata with Mr. Walker.
My surgeon’s PA, Camille, had told me when she stopped by my hospital room on Thursday afternoon, “We’ll fix the limp after we do your other hip.”
“What limp?” Even with her comment, I hadn’t noticed all week until Bob pointed it out, but it’s significant. If I stand up straight and not slip back into the half-crouch I’ve used to survive for the last five years, the muscles pull and tug deep in my pelvis and twinge like my old nemesis menstrual cramps, complete with a mildly nauseating edge.
Session over and Doctor Bob departed, belly and satchel in tow, to return bright and early at ten o’clock on Monday. I poured a ginger ale to calm the cramps, then googled “best heel lifts for leg length discrepancy.”
My very own set of Dr. Foot’s Adjustable 5-Layer Height Increase Insoles, Upgrade Version are out for delivery as I type, and I’ll have Bob help me set the height tomorrow. Then I can hobble around with even legs, albeit one in a flip-flop and one in an old leather ballet flat.
***
Yesterday afternoon I decided, vanity be damned. Those yoga thongs have kept my toes and foot muscles strong. Therefore, once I can drive again, I’ll march around Detwiler’s Farmer’s Market – and through Coastal Orthopedics’ halls then straight into Cashen’s office – in one molded rubber flip-flop and one nice shoe, and too damned bad what anybody thinks.
I told Susan, my Facebook friend of Hell F*ckity Fame. Earlier this week, she posted a meme of Taylor Swift in a black leotard with one of her Ragdoll kitties draped across her shoulders and the caption, “Cat Women Stand Back & Stand By.” Then, later a meme with a mutt in a superhero cape, “Childless Dog People for Harris.”
I told her when I can tolerate sitting here long enough to do something in Canva, I’ll put together a graphic about “Ferret Parents.” I used to have a bundle of those little squirmers back in Chicago, where they had their own room, proper air-conditioning, and no holes in the floor leading nowhere but under this trailer.
Susan said of my stratagem regarding mismatched public appearance footwear:
“If anybody asks, Kate, just tell them a roaming band of ferrets stole your other shoe.”
Wait’ll I tell Doctor Bob.
