Toeing the Line

After slinking away from my harsh refusal to indulge his god complex, Dr. Paz did call in a surgeon to look at the infected toe.
The toe had brought me to Sturdy Memorial Hospital, but after the Friday Night ER admission, it seemed to be ignored in deference to my being diabetic, and I am sure that the toe’s condition instigated some finger wagging of "bad diabetic."
As a diabetic, my circulation does not equal a healthy person’s. I know that, and also know that the side effect is pretty inevitable. I apologize if you’re reading about the inevitability for the first time here; your doctor may not have told you for fear that you would surrender to the inevitable and not take care of yourself. If you’re diabetic, know this now: doctors lie.
My diabetes was never as bad as my numbers–A1C peaking at 16–say it should be. But I had developed Charcot Foot, which passed in and out of Phase One twice. The relapse of the massive swelling further reduced my circulation and the infection, in most likelihood, would not have developed without the Charcot.
Dr. Paz had obviously warned the surgeon about what a hole I am, without tempering the situational truth with how Dr. Paz himself had drawn forth my rougher aspects. The surgeon approached me with an attitude, even while I regarded his arrival with relief. Unfortunately, the surgeon, whose name I don’t remember in part because he ended up doing nothing, harbored his own god complex.
The surgeon looked over the toe, which necessitated the first bandage change in a day and a half. He looked over the Charcot foot. In his godly wisdom, he decided he would take the infected skin off the oe, and would probe the massive swelling that was the tendon that runs on the inside of my foot. I readily agreed to the former but refused the latter.
"We have to know if it’s infected," he insisted.
Told him that the non-toe swelling had been previously diagnosed as Charcot foot. His willingness to stick something into the Charcot swelling told me that he did not know much or anything about that. "No offense, I said, "but the Charcot is known for getting infected by well meaning doctors who either culture it or try to mechanically reduce the swelling. If you do that, two months from now, you’ll have forgotten all about me and I will be having my foot amputated. The toe needs care, but you are not going to stick anything into the foot."
He must have been thinking "Paz was right. What a hole." Because he could not do everything he wanted to do, the surgeon left me without doing anything, including replacing the bandage.
A nurse asked me about the incident a short time later. I asked he if she had ever heard of Charcot foot. She said she had "heard of it." I emphasized to her that most medical people, like her, had only heard of it and that the highest incidence of foot loss directly from it was when well meaning doctors broke the skin at the swelling. I had researched it and would minimize those risks myself.
I had been told that Sturdy had no podiatrist on duty that weekend. After the incident with the surgeon, one appeared, Martin Harris of Plainville, Massachusetts.
Dr. Harris cut away infected skin, determined that the infection had not reached the bone, and removed the toenail, which had pretty much detached itself anyway. He rebandaged the foot.
He also told me that I had been 100% right in stopping the surgeon from probing the tendon with the clear prediction, "It probably would have been a lot sooner than two months before they’d have to amputate."