Wild Trails & Tall Tales

- by Roland Cheek

 

IMMERSION FOOT

It felt as though ten thousand needles were jammed at all angles into my feet. Just seconds before, I'd been unceremoniously shoved from deep sleep by an insistent bladder. Still sleep- drugged, I was nearly upright before excruciating pain swept all other considerations aside. A scream of mortal anguish and the subsequent thump as I hit the floor jolted my wife from bed.

"My feet," I moaned through gritted teeth. "It's my feet. They're burning alive." She switched on the light. Each toe was bright red. So were the heels and along the edges of both feet. She asked, "Can you stand?"

"Stand? I can't even touch them."

I crawled on to the bathroom, then crawled back to bed. After daylight, I crawled to the kitchen. And still later, Jane drove to town and I crawled into the doctor's office.

"Hmmm," the doctor murmured, callous to my suffering as he twisted first one foot, then the other. "Looks like frostbite." When I only growled, he added, "But since it's the dog days of summer, that can't be."

He dropped my feet to his examination stool and leaned back in his chair, lacing fingers behind his neck. "Have you had those feet in water for any prolonged period?"

I nodded. "Yeah. I was fishing at a mountain lake over the weekend. Packed in a rubber raft. It leaked. Sat with my feet in water for three days. Why?"

"Immersion foot," the ex-navy pilot-turned-doctor said. "Fairly common with shipwrecked sailors or downed aviators who spent time in a raft before rescue. Works like frostbite by restricting the blood vessels to the extremities."

It was an interesting clinical analysis, but what I really wanted to know was, "How long will I be down?"

"Oh, I'll prescribe some medicine that will open the vessels. Beyond that, it's just a matter of time. Say three days."

That was over forty years ago. But as with frostbite victims, my feet still remain susceptible to any prolonged exposure to water.

A recent example was with the Flathead's record-setting rise in surface water during spring's snow melt.

For the first time in our thirty-four years on the place, water crept into the below-ground pit housing our well pump. I worked to raise the pump for much of one day, standing in the icy water. Occasionally water lapped over the tops of my rubber boots. When in late afternoon the job was at last finished, I pulled off my boots and socks. After just eight hours of exposure to water, each toe and the heel and edges of both feet were shiny red and itched fiercely.

The moral of this story is that we are all too inclined to treat our feet without proper regard. We undertake long backpacking or hunting excursions without first breaking in new boots; we tolerate worn or broken arches because boots "feel comfortable;" we dry boots too close to a fire; we buy shoes too large or too small or too narrow or too wide; we choose soft cushion insoles and disregard proper heel lasts, arch supports or outer and inner fabrics.

No wonder we're a nation of half-crippled elders.

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