A broken toe??

Yeah, I had climbed onto the counter (you read that right) and was trying to step down... and missed. Got the wind knocked out of me, and my foot was sore. We had friends over for lunch, and I didn't look at my foot (I wear socks around the house these days) until after lunch and a nap. Whoa, the 4th toe was bent at a strange angle, and there was a black and blue area in that quarter of the foot. I went over to the Palo Alto Clinic's Urgent Care facility, where they took a look at it.

The doctor said it looked like a fracture, "because you usually don't get that much bruising unless you have a fracture." Anyway they don't do much for toe fractures -- unlike for a finger fracture. He asked about the pain in my rib cage, to see if there was a cracked rib. "We don't do anything for those either," he said, unless it punctures a lung or something. Probably there's no crack, he said.

After a while, Jeff in X-Ray took me over to the machine, and the doctor came in too. They took a picture, and I overheard someone say, "Medicine should always be like this." Or maybe I have the order wrong. Anyway, it was a fracture. They told me to sit up (easier said than done because of my tender ribcage) and the doctor explained that "the anaesthesia doesn't always work, and it takes two needle sticks." He said, "Are you man enough to have me pull your toe and straighten it?"

I said, "I guess we'll see."

Well, he pulled, and it hurt, and it looks a lot less goofy now. They took a few more X-rays. Afterwards, Jeff showed me the pictures, and the "before" picture definitely shows a fracture. The "after" picture looks a lot better. They gave me this rigid-soled thing that's not really a shoe (great, rain in tomorrow's forecast too -- tomorrow sounds like a telecommuting day). Four weeks of taking it easy on the toe. Ibuprofen or Acetominophen for pain. Followup with my regular doctor.