Musical Insurgency
Volume 4 Book 2 of
Living in the Bonus Round
(Part 12)
Musical Insurgency
Volume 4 Book 2 of
Living in the Bonus Round
(Part 12)
[ Book 4-1 ] -- [ Pt 1 ] [ Pt 2 ] [ Pt 3 ] [ Pt 4 ] [ Pt 5 ]
[ Pt 6 ] [ Pt 7 ] [ Pt 8 ] [ Pt 9 ] [ Pt 10 ] [ Pt 11 ] [ Pt 12 ]
[ Pt 13 ] [ Pt 14 ] -- [ Book 4-3 ]
December 11-14, 2004.
LA Winter / Foot Doctor."You're a very compliant patient, aren't you?" Dr. Powers said as he examined my newly gleaming uncalloused heel. I beamed.
Dr. Powers is a handsome athletic man with wonderfully soft puppy dog eyes, big sexy nose and, sorry straight girls and gay guys reading this, a wife. Still, it felt good to be teacher's pet. I'm still not used to someone trimming my toenails, though. It's the weirdest feeling. But my poor nails were in terrible shape when I visited there a couple of months ago. I had terrible toenail fungus and my previously beautiful peds were looking mangled and discolored.
Normally, I wouldn't really care but being diabetic, both Dr. Mathur and Dr. Mills told me that I should have them looked at and treated.
Now, two months down the road, the fresh new clear nails are about halfway grown out. Dr. Powers put on latex gloves, grabbed some clippers out of his bag and started trimming off as much of the dead white nail as possible. The tool he used looked scary, though -- like wire cutters, so I held my breath most of the time and tried not to wince.
His main concern, however, and the thing he was praising me for, was not my toenails. The only thing I can do for them is take the Lamisil. No, he was praising me for the fact that my heel was soft and shiny. I had previously been purposely building up callouses, thinking they would help me when I -- I don't know, did my firewalking act, I suppose.
But he had said at our first meeting that callouses are dried skin that can split and bleed. And for diabetics, this was not a good thing. So every night, Jim and I have a ritual where we rub ointment on our feet and scrape them with a little metal tool. They're not baby soft yet, but they're getting there.
He also said that the tests I took last time, the one where someone with a box kepting "pinging" the veins in my leg all showed that I had great blood circulation all through my legs and feet. So that was great news.
His office is down in Beverly Hills and since it was a Saturday morning there wasn't much traffic, so I took my little and shot some images of Wilshire Blvd. Nothing special. It's just that I'm always taking pictures of everywhere else. Might as well take them here, too. The sky was magnificently clear and blue.
Only street decorations give away the fact that it's the holiday
season.
Palm trees and holly.
Hey! My old pal Jackie Mason is in town!
Remember when he stole a french
fry from my plate
at the Polish Tea Room in NY?
Oh, the weather outside is sunny.
On Wilshire lots of money.
Inside Dr. Powers' office.
Meanwhile, back in the Valley, the Los Angeles River.
They've been decorating it up a bit but it's still a concrete river.
Steinbeck sleeps on Steve.
The best medicine of all.
This next week, I'll be running down to the South Bay to check out the new recordings of the Sara Haze project. One of the songs I co-wrote is finally getting recorded. It's a searing lyric based on a story Sara sent me about something that actually happened to her. The song is called, "Way Past Love or Hate." I can't wait to hear the arrangement. What I originally wrote was kind of dreamy and languidy sounding, but David said they juiced it up and given it a full rock and roll treatment. I can't wait. It's still hard to believe this beautiful girl is only 15. And what a set of pipes!On Wednesday, I'll be going in for the CT scan of my eyes as part of the surgery prep. Will definitely keep you notified. Meanwhile, I've been in my loft working steadily on some new song demos. This morning at 5am I switched on my computer, donned my headphones and cranked up the sound.
Then I looked up and noticed that a light was flashing from downstairs. Turns out I had forgotten to turn the speakers off. So I was blasting Jim out of bed at full volume.
Fun!
© 1996-2004 by Steve Schalchlin. You have permission to print from this diary and distribute for use in support groups, schools, or to just give to a friend. You do not have permission to sell it.
