The Same, But Different

Sometime last week I was walking though the yard barefoot and felt something stick in the bottom of my foot. When I got back inside I took a look at it, didn’t see anything, and promptly forgot all about it.

Monday night the bottom of my foot started hurting, but just occasionally. Yesterday the “occasionally” got more frequent so I took a look at the sole of my foot. Along the outside edge, halfway between the toes and heel was a small, red, callused spot with a black dot in the middle of it. I obviously had a thorn or tiny splinter there.  I tried to dig it out myself, but that didn't do anything but make it hurt more. I gave up and went to bed. When I got up this morning the area didn't hurt…until I walked on it. Rather than continue to walk around in pain, I decided to go to an urgent care center and have it looked at.

Our health insurance plan is pretty restrictive on in-network urgent care facilities. The one I decided to use was a good portion of the way to work, so even though I didn’t have to clock in at the mall Customer Service desk until after lunch I figured it wouldn’t be worth it to come back home afterwards. I left the house wearing my black work pants, but since the weather was already steamy and I wanted keep my work shirt fresh, I put on a tee and hung the dress shirt in the car.

I hate waiting in rooms full of sick people, so when I arrived at the urgent care and saw there were no cars out front I was optimistic, and thrilled when I got inside and there was no one else in the waiting area. Fifteen minutes after I walked in I was chatting with the doctor. To get the best view of my foot he had me lay face-down on the examination table. He scraped away the callus, then squeezed the offending area until a tiny piece of thorn came out. After he showed it to me he cleaned the wound, put a bandage on it, and told me to sit in the waiting area while he completed the paperwork. Forty minutes after I pulled into the parking lot I was getting into my car to leave.

Because I got out of the urgent care so fast I had almost two hours to kill before my shift started. I didn’t feel like running errands because I’d have to get in and out of my car in the heat, so I decided to drive to a close-by mall that wasn't the one I work at and mall walk.

I had to fit in lunch before my shift, so by time got to the mall and parked I only had a half-hour. I walked from one end to the other on the top floor, then took the escalator downstairs to repeat the process. In the center of the first floor I saw the Customer Service desk, and stopped to talk to my counterpart. I told her who I was and we had a nice chat comparing our two malls…we have stores they don’t, and they have a couple of places that I get a lot of requests for. I left when another customer came up, because when I'm on the inside of the desk I don't like to chit-chat when someone is waiting for an answer to a question.