Shock the Monkey

Hooo boy. That foot nerve pain is back, baby. BACK. It showed up around 10pm last night and yanked me right out of a dead sleep. For whatever reason my foot was cranky AF all day yesterday, even though I did nothing more strenuous than sit at my desk and play with Claude. It was swollen, and the inner ankle, right where the new tendon lives, was absolutely screaming at me, most likely from all that residual swelling.

I’ve been trying to keep that swelling to a minimum, and you can see exactly what I’ve rigged up down there: a thick, cushion-y striped sock with two Moeben arm sleeves pulled over top. Here’s the problem. I hate - I mean HATE - compression sleeves and socks. Honestly, I hate socks in general. But I’ve got to keep the shish-k-toe covered, and I need something between my foot and the boot, so socks it is. I draw the line at compression sleeves, though. And I’ll cop to an extreme sentimentality about these Moeben sleeves that I do not have the time or space to unpack here; I’ve had them for at least ten years. Let’s just say that, like every running-related thing I’ve clung to for more than a decade, I will keep inventing reasons to hold onto them and press them into some rando new purpose. Today, that purpose is skinny leg sleeves.

So I guess I over-squeezed the poor things all day, because by nightfall my ankle was pissed. And it kept me up most of the night with random, strong, painful zaps. So much so that I eventually flung the boot right off my leg and wedged both pillows firmly between my knees and feet, doing anything I could to keep from levitating clean off the mattress every time a fresh zing hit. By this morning most of it had faded. The foot, however, remains cranky and swollen.

In other news, we are closing in on five weeks tomorrow, and today marks a full four weeks of daily stretching and mobility with Travolta. They say it takes 21 days to build a habit, and friends, I am firmly, unshakably in Camp Sunrise-and-Stretching. I genuinely never thought it would stick. Yet here we are. So here’s to another four weeks (because I absolutely cannot guarantee a single thing beyond that). Zaps and all, the foot and I will keep showing up at dawn to bend, twist, and quietly plot our comeback. Peter Gabriel wrote a whole song about getting shocked; I’m just trying to sleep through mine.