Kevin's Walk 9: Day 18, Leg 12

[CAUTION: Gross pictures ahead.]

The weather looks perfect both tomorrow and Saturday in both Jibo and Andong. So I'm stoked about that. I'm less stoked about my energy levels: I walked out to the convenience store again to grab some supplies for tomorrow (unless I'm mistaken, there's nothing close to the Songhak Motel), and it was like pushing through shoulder-deep syrup. The walk back from the convenience store was better, but today's stroll reminded me of how truly wiped out I was last night.

36K is shorter than 39K for sure... but it's close, and I pushed myself to walk faster yesterday evening over the final four kilometers as the sun went down, and the weather transitioned from cool to almost cold. I debated pulling out and putting on my jacket, but my faster pace during that final stretch was keeping me warm enough. By the time I got into town, it was a little after 6 p.m. and fairly dark. Luckily, the Gangnam Motel is located toward the end of town that's closer to the trail I'd just left; all the same, those last few hundred meters felt like forever, partly because I was so intensely visualizing already being in my room.

Getting the room for two nights proved easy enough: as I knew from last year, the motel has a machine into which you put W50,000 and receive a room key for one night, which means you have to track down the manager and pay him directly for a second night. This time, though, a lady was at the information desk, so I simply told her I wanted to stay for two nights. She rang me up and handed me the room key directly.

I was crashing fast when I slumped into my room, but as I wrote yesterday, I dragged my tired ass back out to walk to the convenience store and back just so I could have something to eat (I'd eaten nothing all day). So I got back into my room, ate, watched YouTube, and posted yesterday's blog entry. All thoughts of washing clothes and showering went out the window. I slept and gratefully woke up late today, but I didn't discover how tired and stiff I still was until I went for my recent walk.

But let's back up. Before I went out for today's foray, I peeled off my foot dressings and showered. Before I could get dressed to go out, though, I had to re-dress my feet. I took photos of how chewed-up my right big toe currently looks, and if you have the stomach for it, I've got images for you below.

So let's talk feet! (Turn away now if you're squeamish. Last chance. And don't be fooled by the first few innocuous-seeming photos.)

I began this walk with a right big toe that was still healing from an infection tangentially related to a diabetic foot ulcer. I say "tangentially" because the ulcer itself (still there after appearing years ago) wasn't the problem: the problem was that I routinely chop away that accumulated callus, and I sometimes accidentally cut too deep. In most cases, this causes a minor bleed, and that's it. But weeks ago, I also got an infection so severe that I needed to get a suite of antibiotics. The infection and minor wound were mostly healed when I started this walk on October 27. Hundreds of thousands of sweaty steps later, how do you think my toe is doing now?

Let's first look at my left foot, which has always been less problematic, but which had acquired a blister a bit before the midpoint of this walk.

some discoloration, and the blister itself seems gone

I'm with the Don't Fuck With It school of blister treatment. Don't pop it, thereby unnecessarily breaking the skin and exposing the new, raw skin underneath to potential pathogens, i.e., to infection. Another school of thought suggests popping, washing, and dressing a blister right away. I think this is nuts. And in this case at least, my school turned out to be right.

What I do feel, though, feels like a bone bruise in the ball of the foot.

I manage pain on these walks with heavy doses of ibuprofen—two 400-mg tablets maybe twice a day. NSAIDs aren't great for your kidneys, though, and my docs warned me earlier this year about reduced kidney function. Intellectually, I know that the solution to my blistering problem is not ibuprofen but weight loss: less pressure on the feet. After my stroke in the spring of 2021, I went on the Newcastle Diet and lost 60 pounds in three months, and when I went on that year's walk in the fall, I had almost no foot problems at all. So I have strong personal evidence that weight loss is the ultimate answer. Still, having regained some of that lost weight (my goal weight is 90 kg, or about 200 lbs., or about 14.2 stone—take your pick; I'm currently at about 110 kg), I can't help but turn back to my old, hazardous, NSAID-y friend.

left foot, top: lots of tape-gum grit, but otherwise okay

So let's turn to the right foot, shall we?

right foot, top: also looking okay

But steel yourself:

Some of the skin has that wet-for-days look that indicates seepage.

And here's the underside of my right big toe.

I see a right-facing Día de los Muertos skull in the above image—eye socket, nose hole, gritted teeth. How about you? Do you see it? There's no pain, largely thanks to my diabetic neuropathy, which has been with me for years, and which prompts me to be mindful of my extremities.

But we're not done—

Some deformation of the toe, and note the gap between the first and second toes.

Okay, maybe showing this was gratuitous. I did some clumsy debridement.

And arguably the worst image of all:

puckered lips vant to keess you

But notice how it's not bleeding. There's some weeping/seepage, yes, but no blood welling out of an open wound. I'll be watchful of my toe over the next two days, and I'll see my local doc once I'm back in Seoul, but frankly, I've survived worse, so none of the above worries me.

Aftermath: everything is wiped down, slathered with wound-care ointment, and thoroughly bandaged up, hidden from the sight of mortal men.

Some amount of damage is bound to happen when I do these walks. Maybe I'm just built soft. Maybe I never learned how to condition myself properly. I've come to accept a certain level of dégâts whenever I walk across this small country. Happens every year.

But it's all fun and games until I lose a toe, right? I've been trying to lose annoying parts of my feet for years, and it hasn't happened yet.

Well! That was stimulating, wasn't it? I hope you enjoyed this lovely tour of my feet. A grad-school class I'd taken in Catholic sacramenality taught that the Catholic vision of suffering unites the fleshly and the spiritual, hence the Catholic focus on Christ's Passion on the cross (and the presence of the corpus on the crucifix), as well as the Catholic Mel Gibson's seeming obsession with Christ's torture in Gibson's movie about the Easter event. So at least the Catholics among you can appreciate some of the viscerality of staring deep into the soul of my hallux.

ADDENDUM:

Slightly less gross, here are some pics of the sun exposure I've endured over the course of this twenty-day walk: