I HAVE HEELS AGAIN

I am getting skin back on my heels at last but I won't be wearing shoes for another couple of weeks. I was concerned about it taking so long in case my circulation wasn't up to scratch and I never want to take another circulation test in my life.

I have two, well, four sensitive spots on my body, my feet and my fingertips. The latter is why I'm never going to develop Diabetes. The thought of jamming a needle into my fingers every day for a spot of blood isn't my idea of fun. With the feet, it's the memory of that test.

As my surgeon so quaintly put it, "We have to see what's going on inside your funny fat legs before we go putting expensive bits in there". I had to battle to get those expensive bits as it was because they said I was too young and they would wear out before I did. For this test I had to go to the Department of Nuclear Medicine where they would put God knows what into my legs and see if it went anywhere.

I got plonked on the most uncomfortable bed ever and shown a screen where I could watch the 'going up the legs' show. Even listening to them explaining everything I never considered where they were going to put the dye in. It's a good thing I was in the prone position when they did tell me or nothing short of a tank would have stopped me going through the door to freedom. The dodgy knees might have slowed me down but I'd have made it.

They uncovered a tray with SIX syringes with NEEDLES and said one between big toes, one on either side of the ankles. Ankles I could handle but between toes was a whole other world of nasty. I mean I have two feet, two needles between four toes and here they are telling me it would sting a bit. I have a high threshold of pain but not great for sting and on a scale of one to ten, it was way up in the low hundreds and they don't do one foot at a time. Toes first, gritted teeth, inside of ankles then bash the outside ankles to raise a nice vein by which time the teeth are being ground into dust and fingers are gouging holes into the steel sides of the bed of nails I was on.

It was fascinating watching the screen, Nile Delta on the left, Mississippi Delta on the right (no wonder they put that in spelling bees). Right had it over left for speed but at least I did have working veins in there. After it went right up, they make you go walking for an hour to see what happens. If it's good, the veins start disappearing from the feet up. More fascination but not enough to make me go through it again. Never asked where the dye ended up either, probably still circulating but I did look to see if I glowed in the dark that night.