The Hancock Toe

"Well, that's it, then. Either I shall slowly get better, or I've 'ad it."

A line from classic British sitcom character Anthony St John Aloysius Hancock, when faced with a cold.

While in his case, the fatalism is funny because it's such a cataclysmic overreaction, I'd be lying if I said it didn't resonate a little today.

As newbies and followers of the blog will know, today, d had her "Extreme Urgent" appointment with vascular podiatry to assess the state of the diabetic ulcer on her toe, and the bloodflow in her legs generally. 

I couldn't go with her this time, so a pal valiantly stepped in for company. 

The bottom line is that d has peripheral arterial disease. The bottomer bottom line is she has around 33% of normal bloodflow to the foot with the toe ulcer on it, and 50% normal flow to the other foot. 

So, that's just freakin peachy. 

The black skin of the toe ulcer is apparently necrotic. It's dead. It has ceased to be. It has inserted its own dea parrot joke here but has yet to naff off and join the choir invisible.

The reason I started this blog with the Hancock quote is because it's more or less what the doctors told d about what she comically calls "the black spot." 

"Watch the black spot," they said. "In the best scenario, the bloodflow underneath it will grow fresh tissue, and the black spot will fall off - plop - like a scab."

"Or?" said d, who can recognise one half of a proposition when it's put in front of her.

"Or the blackness will start to grow," they said. "In which case, we'll be looking at partial amputation."

See? Either it'll slowly get better, or the toe's 'ad it.

We'd already embraced the necessity of change, and radical change at that, but that of course in no way makes it easy. 

The thing about d (and about me when I'm in this zone) is that we can absolutely do the self-denial thing. The not having the dessert thing. But what we're finding is that the rhythms and routines of our lives are, not to put too fine a point on it, bastards. The sense that a meal's not really complete without something sweet. The simple watching of baking TV or having timelines flooded with dessert recipes (that latter may be my fault), all those normalized elements that have dipped us in liquid sugar and mutual enablement for 20 years, those are the things that are hard to reprogam in these early, early stages. 

It remains entirely weird that she's the one with the external, watchable signal of how our behavior's impacting us. Weird because doctors have been telling me for decades "Y'need to cut this shit out, or it'll affect your kidneys, or your liver, or your heart, or your eyes..."

And I've known the truth of it, and kept gambling, seeing how far I could push the thing before something critical went clunk.

But nothing has gone clunk loud enough to make me stop. Until now - and the clunk is on the end of d's foot, rather than my own. 

So, like medieval doctors, we watch the toe.

She's going to have new meds to take, and I keep pushing towards blood testing, so we at least have a baseline from which we can push away by positive action. And she has a referral - "Extreme Urgent," naturally - to a full-on vascular surgeon. Quite what the options are that they'll discuss, I'm not sure - I assume at this stage, simply ways to improve bloodflow to her extremities.

Onward, with news that could be better, and at least half a gameplan. And, most importantly, with out Stubborn Bastard faces on - against which no habit-pattern, no dessert craving, or, in my case, no drawerful of casual chocolate can stand.