My Right Foot

The much-acclaimed movie, My Left Foot (1989), is based on the true story of Christy Brown as revealed in his autobiography and brilliantly portrayed by Daniel Day Lewis in his Oscar-winning role of the handicapped protagonist. Afflicted with cerebral palsy, the only functional part of his body was his left foot. He could paint, write, and do extraordinary things with it. I was reflecting on this heart-rending, wonderful film after many years for a reason. A week or so ago, I discovered that my nails needed clipping, and the nails on my big toes had grown conspicuously. So much so that people had begun to take notice; not in a nice way. Would you look at those toes. Ugh! Until that fateful moment, it never occurred to me that people looked at other people’s toes. It was the work of a moment for me to fish out my nail-clippers and get to work on the big toes. 

Now here’s what impelled me to start writing about my right foot, and let me state right away, the concerned trotter is not really deserving of being billed in capitals as My Right Foot. Just a normal foot that happens to be at the end of my right leg. As I got to work in right earnest with the clipper, I had to struggle a fair bit with the nails of my big toes, particularly the one attached to my right foot. Those of you who visit fancy salons for an outrageously expensive pedicure may not realise it, but cutting the nail of one’s big toe, left or right, is no mean task. For unfathomable reasons, these nails are much harder and more inflexible than the nails on the smaller toes or your finger nails.

Finger nails, on the other hand, can be easily bitten off without any mechanical aid. Just observe some youngsters watching the end of a tense cricket match and you will know what I mean. Bite it and spit it out. Nails scattered all over the floor. Why only youngsters, just watch former Australian cricket captain and coach Ricky Ponting, a notorious nail biter, sitting in the dugout. He could be playing a mouth organ the way his fingers are clamped to his mouth. It’s a wonder he has any finger left to chew. A nervous habit, and a filthy one, if the frequent admonition of our elders is anything to go by. Incidentally, did you know that nails and hair keep growing even after you are gathered up and buried. In the poet John Donne’s words, A bracelet of bright hair about the bone. Just as well much of the world cremates its dead.

Let me get back to my right big toe. There I was straining my back muscles to reach my big toe with the clipper. As you enter your 70s, or even 60s for that matter, these apparently routine tasks take on a different degree of difficulty. Once you have finished managing to clumsily cut your toe nails, a visit to your physiotherapist is in order to take care of your knotted back muscles. Perhaps those who deem it worthwhile to spend a small fortune at the tender mercies of their fashionable pedicurist, have a point after all. However, in my case a visit to a footsie (my nom de guerre for a pedicurist) would have been infinitely preferable to what, in fact, happened to me.

My inexpert handling of my right big toe led to some serious medical issues. As explained, because of the toughness of the nails, I literally cut off more than I could chew. Is that how the expression ‘tough as nails’ came about? Or does that aphorism refer to the other ‘nails’ that you hammer into wooden planks and joints? I wonder. Be that as it may, to my shock and horror, I discovered that I had been ignoring my toe nails, at least the one on the right foot, to a point where it had started growing inwards; an ingrowing toe nail. While I sat staring at the royal mess I had created for myself, a trickle of blood started oozing. Without wishing to alert and alarm my better half, I locked myself up in the bathroom, and did whatever I could with wads of cotton wool, Dettol, and some clean strips of cloth. A stop-gap measure. While the bleeding was momentarily staunched, the pain got worse and the best way I can describe what was achingly happening to my right big toe, onomatopoeically, is ‘boing, boing’ indicating a repeated throbbing sensation.

At this point, my wife had to come into the picture and I made a clean breast of it. She would have found out anyway. You can never keep a messed-up, painful toe under wraps for long. ‘My foot got caught in the door jamb’ would come across as a limp lie, to tie in with my limp gait. Next thing I knew, I was being driven off to our nearby friendly GP. By now, the fleshy part of the toe had developed a conspicuous, white tinge, possibly an incipient sign of pus formation. I feared I might be going under the knife, but made no mention of it to the better half. Little did I know that she was thinking on similar lines. Septicemia briefly flashed across my fevered brain. Anyway, off we went to the man who had taken the Hippocratic oath. He took one, disgusted look at the toe, let out a volley of oaths and pointed firmly to the surgical room, called his nurse to prep me for surgery, pronto. I wanted to tell him that the pain was subsiding in the hope that some medication might be prescribed instead of the ‘chop chop’ option.

‘But Doc….’ he did not let me finish.

‘No buts, no ifs, I have seen it and that’s that. Off you go to the surgery.’ Evidently, the errant nail had macheted its way through the nerves and any further burrowing would have led to serious consequences. He might have been condemning me to the gallows. (If you want a good laugh over this, watch the Fawlty Towers episode on YouTube featuring Sybil Fawlty’s in-growing toenail.) I swallowed and slunk off to the surgery and waited with trepidation, the good, old ticker pounding away like nobody’s business. Sting’s timely song, Be Still my Beating Heart played around in my head, but provided little comfort. After an uneasy half hour or so, the doctor breezed in, and announced that he will be injecting my toe with an anaesthetic (‘this won’t hurt’) to numb the digit while he waded into my toe with surgical knives and other implements of torture. The local anaesthetic was a blessing, as I felt nothing during this minor surgery but as my hearing was not impaired, I could take in all manner of sounds aided by a few ‘oohs,’ ‘aahs’ and ‘ayyos’ from the nurse. Clear as a bell. Which did nothing to help restore my equanimity. It was all over in about 5 minutes at the end of which, the doctor’s parting words to the nurse, ‘clean and dress it up,’ came like a soothing balm. End of ordeal.

 I still felt absolutely nothing and had no idea what had transpired. In a quaking voice, I mock-ironically asked the doctor, ‘have you lopped off my entire toe Doc, or is it still there?’ He just gave me an enigmatic smile and whooshed off the room, leaving me still uneasy. The nurse, who appeared to possess a macabre sense of humour, comforted me by saying, ‘you will be able to walk after a few days, even without the toe, Sir.’ I craned my neck and nervously peered at my right leg, and was greatly relieved to see a clean, white bandage round my right toe, while the nurse giggled, enigmatically. After the mandatory rest and recovery for about ten minutes I walked out, rather, hobbled out, my toe intact and the operation successful. The nurse asked me if I would like to take the severed toenail with me. I did not detect any irony in her voice, so I guess she meant it. I fleetingly considered having it mounted and displayed as a trophy, but wiser counsels prevailed.

So, there you have it. The story of My Right Foot, the capitals now fully earned. My point, quite simply, is this. If Daniel Day Lewis can be awarded an Oscar for going on and on about his character’s left foot, or rather His Left Foot, I don’t see why I should not go to town somewhat on the travails of My Right Foot. Granted My Right Foot is incapable of writing or painting, or doing anything at all other than mindlessly (in)growing itself a useless nail that is impossible to cut at home. A total nuisance in fact, but one can draw some salutary lessons from my trivial episode. The gentler sex, at least many of them, love to grow their nails and daub all manner of paints and polishes on them. We males are not called upon to similarly indulge ourselves, unless we are real odd balls. So, if you spot a nail growing more than it should, particularly on your toes, get thee to a pedicurist or chiropodist as fast as your feet can take you. Take care of your toes because your toes will not take care of themselves.

Leonardo da Vinci once said, ‘the human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.’ That’s all very well for Leonardo. He was fully limbed from hand to foot enabling him to paint that famously enigmatic smile of you-know-who. Spare a thought for the palsied Christy Browns of the world, not to speak of amateur toenail cutters.

 It was a big day for enigmatic smiles (and giggles).