Blisters are the most major minor injury there is.
I was thinking about that as I found myself in the emergency room at Aspen Valley Hospital a couple of weeks ago, screaming at the top of my lungs as the doc injected anesthetic into my foot. It was honestly the most pain I have experienced since getting my belly button pierced. I know blisters seem super minor – until they happen to you.
Adding insult to injury, so to speak, I had acquired these blisters on a backcountry ski trip with a famous local climber. This is a guy who has endured some serious hardships in the backcountry, given his right arm, so to speak. That sort of put me in a position where I felt like a heel (to run with the analogy) for complaining about my silly little blisters. But the truth is, those little flesh wounds inflicted some serious pain from the very first day.
First of all, I had rented alpine touring equipment, including boots I had never worn before. There was no snow at the trailhead, which meant there was no ski track to demarcate the route. We ended up bushwacking up a steep, muddy ravine filled with cow pies, our skis strapped to our heavy packs. Let’s just say those ski boots aren’t made for walkin’. The snow, once we finally hit it, was like mashed potatoes – not much better than walking in mud.
When we arrived at the hut 7 miles and five hours later, I understood the true meaning of “hot spots.” By the end of skiing the second day, my skin came off with my boots, the raw, burning flesh beneath it totally exposed.
While I enjoyed an idyllic day of spring skiing near the hut, I dreaded our departure, the long ski back out. Rotten, hollow snow made for a slow, tedious descent, like walking on a balance beam for 7 miles. I wrapped my ankles with duct tape, but it still felt like a nail was being driven through my foot with every step. Once safely back at the car four miserable hours later, I ripped off the tape, and the skin from the newest blister that had formed on the ball of my left foot left came with it. I carefully slid my sore little feet into a pair of heavenly flip-flops and quickly downed the few beers we had left behind in the truck.
The following day my left foot swelled and turned colors, so my toes looked like little sausages. I ran into a friend of mine who is a nurse, so I asked her to take a look. She is from Russia, so she has this accent that makes everything she says sound more dramatic. “Diss ees veddy seeerious,” she said, putting her hand on my shoulder so I felt like I might die any second. “Vou coult get gang-greent. It coult spreat to your heart veddy, veddy quickly.”
I called my dad, a doctor who is famous for underestimating my ailments, and he goes: “You don’t want to mess around with that. You should go to the emergency room today.”
Admittedly I feel a little foolish checking into the ER for a blister, so I try to qualify it with something impressive, like, “My friend told me it could be gangrene.”
The good news is the doc acts like maybe the blister is worth a little attention. I’m secretly pleased with that – until they come over to my bed armed with all these big needles. They give me several shots to numb my foot so they can cut the thing off, and I’m screaming at the top of my lungs, sweating profusely and squirming around, so they have to hold me down like a crazy person. Meanwhile, the guy in the bed next to me, who is like 102 years old and had just dislocated his hip, is having a little party, raving about the weather and how wonderful services were at church that morning.
When it’s all over the doc gives me a little pat on the knee and tells me, “You were right to come in,” even though I can tell he’s lying. I’m sure he’s used to dealing with types like me and knows the best medicine is telling me what he thinks I want to hear.
I limp over to the checkout counter dragging my numb foot behind like a little monster, and the girl smiles like she’s got the best news in the world for me. “That’s going to be six hundred dollars, please,” she says.
Now that hurts.
