Those of you following the increasingly elaborate saga of What the Fuck Is Wrong With Genna’s Foot will be pleased to know we finally have additional information.
For weeks, my right foot and I have been engaged in a hostile negotiation. It started with what we thought was a fracture, progressed through a walking boot, urgent care, alarming swelling, steroids, steroid-fueled ADHD adventures, and my continued insistence on using the foot despite considerable evidence that the foot would prefer I fucking stop.
This week, I finally had the MRI. And because apparently I can’t simply attend a medical appointment without turning it into a situation, the story begins several hours earlier with me coding.
This was my first mistake.
Not the coding itself. Coding is fine. Coding is lovely. Coding is also precisely the kind of activity where my ADHD brain says, “Oh, we're interested in this? Wonderful. I have disabled the passage of time.”
My MRI was scheduled. I knew when it was scheduled. I knew how long it would take to get there. Presumably I had every intention of behaving like a responsible adult who understands clocks.
Then I started coding. You know where this is going. I disappeared into it.
There’s a particular kind of ADHD hyperfocus where the rest of reality doesn't exactly disappear, it simply loses voting privileges. You're doing the thing, solving the problem, chasing the next little breakthrough, and somewhere outside your immediate field of vision, civilization continues without you.
Eventually I looked at the time.
I had three minutes to leave the house.
Three minutes until the absolute latest moment I needed to be physically exiting my house if I had any hope of arriving on time. I hadn't even had COFFEE yet.
So I launched.
There was no graceful transition from Coding Genna to Leaving the House Genna. There was just an emergency evacuation. Grab the things. Get out the door. Get in the car. Drive.
In the rain.
And then I went to the wrong intersection.
Fine.
Correct course.
Except apparently once wasn't enough.
I went to the wrong intersection twice.
There is something uniquely infuriating about being late while simultaneously knowing that every single obstacle between you and your destination was personally handcrafted by your own fucking brain.
Nobody did this to me. There was no villain. No elaborate conspiracy. Just me, the rain, and whatever collection of neurons had apparently decided street navigation was an optional feature that morning.
Somehow, against all reasonable expectations, I made it. Barely.
I got inside, filled out the paperwork, handed everything over, and finally sat down. And that's when the adrenaline started wearing off.
You know that moment after you've been rushing where your brain finally reconnects with your body? You're sitting there, heart still going a little too fast, mentally reviewing whether you remembered everything, and you finally have enough processing power available to notice your surroundings again.
I looked down at my feet.
Bunny slippers.
I had left my house. Driven through the rain. Gotten lost at the wrong intersection twice. Arrived at a medical facility. Checked in. Filled out paperwork. Made small talk with the receptionist. Sat in the waiting room.
And at no point during any of this had my brain thought it might be worth mentioning that I was wearing my fucking bunny slippers.
Not shoes that are particularly comfortable. Not some slip-on thing that could plausibly pass as intentional. Bunny. Slippers.
Apparently when I realized I had three minutes to leave, my brain ran the preflight checklist and footwear simply didn't make the cut.
Phone? Yes.
Keys? Yes.
Wallet? Yes.
Dignity?
We don't have time for that. GO.
Honestly, at this point I feel like the bunny slippers were appropriate. This entire foot saga has been so ridiculous that arriving for the definitive imaging appointment dressed from the ankles down like a woman wandering into the kitchen at 2:00 a.m. looking for shredded cheese feels narratively correct.
Then came the MRI. They asked what kind of music I wanted. Easy. Eighties. I am a Xennial woman trapped inside a giant magnet with a busted foot. Give me the music of my people.
Except they couldn't remember what channel the eighties station was on.
So I got jam bands. For forty-five minutes. JAM. BANDS. Christ.
I don't know what karmic debt I was repaying inside that machine, but apparently it was substantial.
There I was, lying perfectly still while an enormous medical tube made industrial banging noises around my foot, bunny slippers on the floor beside the big ass device, listening to forty-five minutes of music that seemed philosophically opposed to the concept of reaching a destination.
Do you know how long a jam band song feels when you're inside an MRI? Approximately one fiscal quarter. Every time I thought surely we had arrived at the conclusion of whatever musical journey we were on, somebody discovered another guitar solo.
I asked for the eighties. I wanted synthesizers. I wanted songs that understood the importance of a chorus. I WANTED CYNDI LAUPER.
Instead I was trapped in a magnetic cylinder while a group of men somewhere apparently explored the emotional possibilities of one chord for seventeen minutes.
Eventually, mercifully, it ended. And the MRI finally gave us some answers.
There's a torn ligament and a deep bone bruise on the inside of my right foot, just before my thumb toe.
So that's neat.
Obviously I'm glad to finally know what we're dealing with. After weeks of pain, swelling, the boot, the urgent care visit, the steroids, and the increasingly absurd accommodations surrounding this stupid foot, having actual imaging show what's happening in there is a relief.
Although “torn ligament” is not exactly the phrase I was hoping would come out of this adventure.
Now I'm waiting to find out what fix a torn ligament means.
I don't know yet.
I'm trying not to get ahead of myself, which is difficult because getting ahead of myself is one of my core competencies. My brain would very much like to research every possible treatment, recovery timeline, outcome, complication, specialist, medical device, and obscure foot ligament known to science, then construct seventeen hypothetical futures before breakfast.
Instead, I'm waiting to hear what the actual plan is for my actual foot.
Look at me. Growth. Sort of.
Because two mornings after the MRI, I got dressed in the dark. I pulled on a pair of socks. Eventually there was enough light for me to look down and notice something stuck to one of them.
A squishy, foamy MRI target sticker.
Apparently one of the little markers from the scan had somehow survived the entire journey home, made its way into the ecosystem of my clothing, and refused to let go of that sock.
Which means I learned two important things.
First, I probably need to do laundry.
Second, there is at least a nonzero chance my bunny slippers are currently storing electromagnetic spooky rays. I don't know how MRI physics works and I refuse to research it because reality will almost certainly ruin this for me.
So until further notice, the slippers are irradiated. Possibly haunted. Definitely complicit.
And somewhere in all of this is the perfect summary of what the last several weeks have been like.
I have legitimate medical shit happening. My foot genuinely hurts. There is actual damage in there, and I now have imaging to prove that I wasn't simply being dramatic about it.
But I'm also apparently incapable of experiencing a straightforward medical problem.
There must be side quests. There must be steroids turning my ADHD up to eleven. There must be puzzles. There must be urgent care. There must be hardware stores. There must be forty-five minutes of jam bands.
And, apparently, there must be bunny slippers.
So now we wait. This week I should find out what comes next, and what exactly we're going to do about the torn ligament and bone bruise.
Until then, I'm going to try to stay off the foot. Okay, that's a lie. I have to take my kid to Target today cause apparently doing the mom-thing doesn't GAF about such issues.
I'm going to try not to hyperfocus so hard that I nearly miss any additional medical appointments. I'm going to try to wear actual shoes when leaving the house.
And I'm going to keep a cautious eye on the bunny slippers.
Those fuckers have seen things.